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ORATORY OF THE SOUTH 



ORATORY OF THE 
SOUTH 

From the Civil War to the Present Time 



By 

edwin Dubois shurter 

Associate Professor of Public Speaking in the University of Texas, 

Editor of "The Modern Speaker" and "Masterpieces of 

Modern Oratory." Author of "Science and Art 

of Debate," "Public Speaking," and 

"Extempore Speaking." 




New York and Washington 

THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 

1908 






LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

DEC J 1908 

CUSS tX XXc, No, 

copy Jr ' 



Copyright, 1908, by 
The Neale Publishing Company 









CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Oratory Not a Lost Art 15 

Don P. Halsey 
Literature and a Lost Cause 19 

C. Alphonso Smith 
Puritan and Cavalier 21 

William Gordon M'Cabe 
Visions of the Civil War 26 

Nathaniel E. Harris 
The Confederate Dead 31 

Benjamin F. Jonas — - 
The Women of the Confederacy 34 

Charles Scott 
Tribute to the Women of the South 36 

Albert H. Whitfield 
Last Days of the Confederacy 39 

John B. Gordon 
Eulogy of General John B. Gordon 43 

Stephen D. Lee 
A Southern Gentleman 45 

John Sharp Williams 
The Young Lawyer 50 

F. Charles Hume, Jr. 
The Majesty of Law 54 

Charlton H. Alexander 
Lawyers and Lawlessness 61 

Selden P. Spencer 
President Roosevelt 6$ 

James Stephen Hogg 
Tribute to James S. Hogg ^ 67 

Alexander W. Terrell 
Tribute to President McKinley 70 

Monroe McClurg 

Upon the Death of William McKinley 72 

f< Marcellus E. Davis 
Education and Progress 76 

Benjamin H. Hill 



>l 



6 Contents 

PAGE 

The Uses of a Library 80 

Samuel M. Smith 
The Influence of the Poet 83 

Dunbar Rowland 
The Penalties of Progress 86 

Thomas W. Jordan 
The Duty of the Educated Man to His Country 90 

Francis P. Venable 
The Education of Women 95 

Charles D. Mclver 
The Culture Afforded by Scientific Training ... 98 

Henry Louis Smith 
The University of Virginia 102 

William R. Abbott 
New England and the South 104 

Edwin A. Alderman 
The South and the Constitution 109 

Hugh A. Dinsmore 
No Colonies 114 

George Graham Vest 
The Strength of the People .^Tr 116 

Guy Carleton Lee 
American Citizenship and the American Jew . . 119 

Leon Harrison 
Truth and Sincerity of Character 123 

James Gibbons 
The Case of Senator Reed Smoot, of Utah .... 129 

Augustus O. Bacon 
Reconstruction in Missouri 131 

William J. Stone 
Justice to Jefferson Davis 139 

Charles E. Fenner 
Tribute to Winnie Davis 145 

Bennett H. Young 
A Follower of Lee 149 

John W. Daniel 
Lee and Appomattox 153 

Augustus O. Stanley 
Eulogy on General Lee 157 

Colonel William H. Stewart 



Contents 7 

PAGE 

Abraham Lincoln 161 

Henry Watterson 
Lincoln and the South 164 

Newton C. Blanchard 
Lincoln at Gettysburg 167 

John V. L. Findlay 
Contributions of the Hebrew People to Human 
Advancement 171 

Morris Sheppard 
The Scattered Nation 175 

Zebulon Baird Vance 
On the Death of Senator Vance 180 

Charles W. Tillett 
The Great Mississippi Valley 183 

John M. Allen 
The Mysteries and Glories of Duluth and the 
St. Croix 186 

J. Proctor Knott 
Man's Responsibility to the Higher Law 191 

Clarence N. Ousley 
Jeffersonian Democracy 194 

W. C. P. Breckenridge 
The Man with His Hat in His Hand 198 

Clark Howell 
The Old Settler's Home 201 

John F. Philips 
The Banker as a Citizen 204 

Thomas S. Henderson 
Frank P. Blair 208 

Champ Clark 
Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston 211 

Robert Minor Wallace 
Texas and the Panama Canal 217 

Robert L. Henry 
Tribute to Ireland 219 

Charles A. Culberson 
The Division of Texas 221 

Joseph W. Bailey 
Louisiana 224 

Thomas J. Kernan 



8 Contents 

PAGE 

The City of Shreveport 226 

Edward H. Randolph 
Eulogy of Charles Sumner 230 

Lucius Q. C. Lamar 
Tribute to Lucius Q. C. Lamar 234 

Warren A. Candler 
Life Lessons 237 

George W. Bain 
The Flag of the Union Forever 241 

Fitzhugh Lee 
The American Soldier 243 

Joseph Wheeler 
For a Larger Navy 245 

Richard P. Hobson 
The Navy in Peace and War 250 

Winfield Scott Schley 
The Hero of Santiago 252 

Isador Rayner 
For a Constitutional Convention 254 

David A. De Armond 
The Negro Problem ,• 258 

Eaton J. Bowers 
Against the Enlistment of Negro Soldiers .... 262 

James L. Slayden 
The Fifteenth Amendment 266 

Allen Caperton Braxton 
The Solution of the Race Problem 269 

William H. Fleming 
The Development of the South 276 

Ezekiel S. Candler 
An Appalachian Forest Reserve 280 

Joshua W. Caldwell 
Tribute to Calvin Henderson Wiley 284 

James Y. Joyner 
The Democracy of the South 288 

Henry W. Grady 
Reconstruction in the South; Past and Present 294 

Charles B. Galloway 
Prohibition in North Carolina 298 

Jeter C. Pritchard 



N 



Contents 9 

PAGE 

The Blue and the Gray 302 

William O. Bradley 
South Carolina and the Civil War 306 

Joseph A. McCullough 
The Third House 312 

Frederick W. Lehman 
The Magna Charta 318 

Uriah M. Rose 
Eulogy of William B. Bate 323 

Edward W. Carmack 
Chief Justice Marshall 327 

Charles J. Bonaparte 
The Last Stand of Lee's Veterans 332 

Emory Speer 



INDEX TO SPEAKERS 



(Alphabetically arranged) 



PAGE 

Abbott, William R 102 

Alderman, Edwin A. ... 104 
Alexander, Charlton H. 54 

Allen, John M 183 

Bacon, Augustus O. ... 129 

Bailey, Joseph W 221 

Bain, George W 237 

Blanchard, Newton C. .164 
Bonaparte, Charles J. . . 327 

Bowers, Eaton J 258 

Bradley, William O. . . . 302 
Braxton, Allen Caper- 
ton 266 

Breckenridge, W. C. P. 194 
Caldwell, Joshua W. . . . 280 

Candler, Ezekiel S 276 

Candler, Warren A. . . . 234 
Carmack, Edward W. .323 

Clark, Champ 208 

Culberson, Charles A. . .219 

Daniel, John W 149 

Davis, Marcellus L 72 

DeArmond, David A. . .254 

Dinsmore, Hugh A 109 

Fenner, Charles E 139 

Findlay, John V. L. ... 167 
Fleming, William H. . .269 
Galloway, Charles B. . .294 

Gibbons, James 123 

Gordon, John B 39 

Grady, Henry W 288 

Halsey, Don P 15 

Harris, Nathaniel E. . . 26 

Harrison, Leon 119 

Henderson, Thomas S. .204 

Henry, Robert L 217 

Hill, Benjamin H 76 

Hobson, Richard P. ...245 
Hogg, James Stephen . . .65 

Howell, Clark 198 

Hume, Charles F., Jr. . . 50 

Jonas, Benjamin F 31 

Jordan, Thomas W. ... 86 



PAGE 

Joyner, James Y 284 

Kernan, Thomas J 224 

Knott, J. Proctor 186 

Lamar, Lucius Q. C. . . .230 

Lee, Fitzhugh 241 

Lee, Guy Carleton ....116 

Lee, Stephen D 43 

Lehman, Frederick W. .312 
McCabe, William Gor- 
don, 21 

McClurg, Monroe 70 

McCullough, Joseph A. . 306 
Mclver, Charles D. ... 95 
Ousley, Clarence N. ... 191 

Philips, John F 201 

Pritchard, Jeter C 298 

Randolph, Edward H. . .226 

Rayner, Isador 252 

Rose, Uriah M 318 

Rowland, Dunbar 83 

Schley, Winfield Scott . . 250 

Scott, Charles 34 

Sheppard, Morris 171 

Slayden, James L 262 

Smith, C. Alphonso .... 19 
Smith, Henry Louis .... 98 

Smith, Samuel M 80 

Speer, Emory 332 

Spencer, Selden P 61 

Stanley, Augustus O. ..153 
Stewart, Colonel Will- 
iam H 157 

Stone, William J 131 

Terrell, Alexander W. . 67 

Tillett, Charles W 180 

Vance, Zebulon Baird . . 175 

Venable, Francis P 90 

Vest, George Graham . . 114 
Wallace, Robert Minor .211 

Watterson, Henry 161 

Wheeler, Joseph 243 

Whitfield, Albert H. . . . 36 
Williams, John Sharp . . 45 
Young, Bennett H 145 



INTRODUCTION 

As a teacher of public speaking in a Southern uni- 
versity the editor has found that Southern oratory, 
especially in modern times, has been little exploited. 
While in books of oratorical selections we find repre- 
sented noted Southern orators of the past, — such as 
Henry, Randolph, Prentiss, Clay, Calhoun, Lamar, 
Benjamin, Toombs, Wigfall, Davis, Yancey, Breck- 
enridge, and others, — since the Civil War, with the 
exception of Grady, public speakers of the South have 
received scant recognition. This is certainly not due 
to lack of material, for the new problems of liberty, 
education, and government that have arisen in the 
South since the Civil War have brought forth their 
expounders and champions who in public speech have 
proven themselves worthy successors of those states- 
men of the elder period who earned for the South Its 
title of the "Home of Oratory." 

The present work is an attempt to give the latter- 
day speakers representation. The period covered ex- 
tends from the fall of the Confederacy to the present 
time. Though this period comprises less than a half 
century, it nevertheless has been crowded, especially 
in the South, with events and problems that have 
called forth many noteworthy oratorical efforts. In- 
deed, the speeches of the South's public men since 
1865 will reveal the logic of events in the South in 
recent history — our people's point of view, their 
spirit, and their ideals — as perhaps nothing else 
could. Within this time may be noted three oratori- 
cal periods: 

(1) The period of Reconstruction, from 1865 to 
1876. The oratory of this period, fettered by a re- 



12 Oratory of the South 

striction of civil freedom, was largely confined to 
Congress, and, when the carpetbag regime permitted, 
to legislative assemblies. The picture of this period, 
as portrayed by Senator Stone, of Missouri, in his 
speech contained in this volume, will convey some 
idea of the conditions which necessarily restricted the 
freedom of public speech. 

(2) The period of Readjustment and Reconcilia- 
tion, from 1876 to 1898. Now began the real work 
of readjustment regarding the governmental and race 
problems which the War created and which the Re- 
construction period had only made more difficult. In 
the work of reconciliation between the sections, to 
which the Spanish-American War gave a mighty im- 
pulse, Grady stands as the representative orator. 

(3) The period of what may be termed Nation- 
ality, extending from 1898 to the present time. Not 
that the spirit of nationality was non-existent in the 
South prior to the Spanish-American War, but the 
war gave a great impetus to this spirit, and furnished 
an occasion for its manifestation. Generally speak- 
ing, however, prior to 1898 the attention of the 
South's public men was in large measure absorbed by 
affairs at home; the primary task was to grapple with 
the problems resulting from the Civil War. These 
problems, it is true, are as yet by no means settled, 
but with the reestablishment of the principle of local 
self-government, and with a more just and catholic at- 
titude on the part of the nation as a whole, the South 
has, in turn, especially during the last decade, de- 
veloped anew a national patriotism; and nowhere is 
this more manifest — since popular oratory is always 
an index of public opinion — than in the speeches of 
our present-day orators. 

Webster once said that for real oratory three 
things are necessary: the subject, the occasion, and 
the man. The preceding brief historical sketch of 



Introduction 13 

Southern oratory since the fall of the Confederacy 
certainly shows an abundance of subjects and occa- 
sions; and it is one purpose of this volume to show 
that there has been no dearth of speakers. It would 
be impossible, of course, to include in a single vol- 
ume, or in several volumes, speeches from all the 
prominent Southern orators of the day, but it is be- 
lieved that the speeches herein contained are fairly 
representative. At any rate, that has been the aim 
in making the selection from a mass of available 
material. The selection aims to be representative, 
also, of subject-matter and style. To that end, 
the editor has not in all cases selected those speeches 
which he considered the best available, but he has 
aimed to give representation to various subjects and 
styles — from the political speech to the scholarly ad- 
dress, from the highly wrought, emotional, "fire- 
eating" style to the calm, judicial treatment and 
purely intellectual appeal. 

While popular oratory in the Southern States may. 
have relatively more of the emotional element, yet, 
contrary to an idea that is more or less prevalent, rep- 
resentative public speaking in the South differs little 
from that in the North. True, the point of view on 
political and racial questions may be different, but 
even a cursory reading of the selections in this vol- 
ume will demonstrate, it is believed, what is so often 
the theme of present-day oratory — that we Ameri- 
cans are essentially one people, and, as a corollary, 
that no section has a monopoly either of ideas or of 
their expression. 

In order to have as full a representation as pos- 
sible, extracts only are not infrequently given. How- 
ever, the editor has endeavored in all cases to avoid 
the scrappy, disjointed, and incomplete extracts that 
are sometimes found in books of oratorical selections. 
In each case the selection is given sufficiently in full 



14 Oratory of the South 

to fairly exhaust a particular topic, and a careful ef- 
fort has been made not to violate the law of unity. 

In most instances the selections are short enough 
for use as declamations in the schools and colleges; 
and in those cases where they are too long for such 
use, the teacher or student, by omitting one or more 
paragraphs, and supplying, it may be, a connecting 
sentence or two, may readily reduce any selection to 
the desired length. 

The thanks of the editor are due to many teachers 
and public men in the South for helpful suggestions, 
and especially to the hundreds of public speakers who 
so kindly responded to requests for copies of their 
speeches. In most cases, indeed, the material for the 
selections in this work was furnished by the speakers 
themselves. 

E. D. S. 

The University of Texas, 
June, 1908. 



ORATORY NOT A LOST ART 

DON P. HALSEY 

Of the Lynchburg (Va.) Bar; formerly a member of the 
Virginia State Senate 

[Extracts from a lecture on the "Art of Oratory," first 
delivered before the literary societies at Hamden-Sidney 
College, Virginia, in 1896, and thereafter on various occa- 
sions.] 

We frequently hear it said that the age of great 
orators is past, and that while oratory may have been 
the best vehicle for the diffusion of thought and 
knowledge when printing did not exist, it has been 
superseded and rendered useless by the development 
of the wonderful power of the press. Far be from 
me to disparage the press. It is a great and useful 
institution, without which it would be hard for us to 
get along. It is the mighty engine of progress which 
drags the train of modern thought through every vil- 
lage and hamlet and county and city, carrying inspira- 
tion to the people to think higher thoughts and to do 
nobler deeds, and telling them of the seasons when to 
"take occasion by the hand and make the bonds of 
freedom wider yet." It is one of the bulwarks of 
liberty, and I do not consider it necessary for me to 
disparage it in order to earnestly combat the fal- 
lacious proposition that oratory is declining. Ora- 
tory and the press have similar missions, but functions 
and methods essentially different, and they are mu- 
tually helpful rather than hurtful. I am a believer 
in the truth stated by Webster that true eloquence is 
found only when it exists in "the man, the subject, 
and the occasion," and the subject and the occasion 
are just as important as the man. Oratory is an 



16 Oratory of the South 

abiding faculty in mankind, and the supply never 
greatly exceeds or falls short of the demand. It may 
just now be at its ebb, but it has been so a hundred 
times before. It has also been at the flood again as 
often, and so surely as prosperity always follows 
adversity, so truly will a temporary decadence be fol- 
lowed by a revival in oratory. History shows us that 
the great orators have appeared, and the great ora- 
tions have been delivered, in the Revolutionary pe- 
riods. Great orators have always accompanied great 
epochs, and whenever there have been wrongs to 
right, whenever there has been truth to spread, when- 
ever there has been the vital spark of independence 
to kindle into flames of mountain height, then there 
have been heard the voices of orators, clearing the 
way and blazing the path for the onward march of 
right and justice. 

Those who argue that oratory is decadent forget 
the unchanging character of human nature. The 
historian Bancroft has beautifully said: "The ma- 
terial world does not change in its masses or in its 
powers. The stars shine with no more luster than 
when they first sang together in the glory of their 
birth. The flowers that gem the fields and forests 
before America was discovered now bloom around 
us in their season. The sun that shone on Homer 
shines on us in unchanging luster; the bow that 
beamed on the patriarch still glitters in the clouds. 
Nature is the same. For her no new forces are gen- 
erated; no new capacities are discovered. The earth 
turns on its axis, and perfects its revolutions, and re- 
news its seasons without increase or advancement." 

If this be true of nature, it is truer still of man. 
It is only in one sense that it is true of nature at all. 
We know that nature is subject to change, and that 
the very stars themselves shall grow old and die out 
of the sky. But with human nature it is different. 



Don P. Halsey 17 

Humanity may grow ; it may progress; but the same 
influences which acted upon it in the time of Demos- 
thenes act upon it still, and oratory is as potent a 
force in the world to-day as it was in the palmiest 
days of Greece or Rome. 

As a matter of fact the men who exercise the most 
influence in the world to-day are not the millionaires, 
of whom we hear so much ; not the Rockefellers and 
Goulds and Morgans who dominate the realm of 
finance; not the mere money-grubbers who inhabit 
the streets called Lombard and Wall. They have a 
large part in the world's affairs, it is true, but above 
and beyond them in influence and in power are the 
statesmen, the preachers, the thinkers, the philoso- 
phers, whose eloquence is molding public opinion — 
that great silent force which is under the world, and 
which is more powerful to move and uplift it than the 
lever of Archimedes. These are the men who are 
shaping the world's future history, and no greater in- 
strumentality is at their command than the queenly 
art of oratory. 

No, my friends, there is no such thing as "deca- 
dence of oratory." There are as great orators living 
to-day as have ever existed at any period of the 
world's history. They may not be known, having 
never had the opportunity or the occasion to show 
their powers ; but they live, and the world will know 
it, if the occasion arises. The art of oratory is not 
in decadence. It survives and will survive as long as 
time shall endure. Humanity does not change, and 
the influences which have acted upon it from the be- 
ginning will continue to act upon it to the end. This 
is not the first time that men have claimed oratory to 
be a thing of the past. As far back as the days of 
old Rome Tacitus lamented that the great orators 
were all gone and that oratory had declined, and yet 
we have ever seen that, when occasion called it forth, 



18 Oratory of the South 

it followed in as pure and strong a stream as in the 
days of Cicero himself. Thus it will ever be. As 
our needs, so shall be our strength; and if ever the 
time shall come when oppression shall find a place in 
our land, — when the rights of the people shall be 
trodden down, when patriotism shall need to be 
awakened to destroy tyrants, when our social fabric 
shall become rotten and need renewal, or when the 
necessity shall arise to scare "Church-harpies from the 
Master's feast," — then no one need ever fear that 
there will not arise great men who, by the power of 
oratory, greater, perhaps, than the world has ever 
known before, will arouse the people to a sense of 
their dangers, and lead the van in the upward march 
of civilization, enlightenment, and Christianity. 
Thus may it be. Through all the changes that are to 
come as "the great world goes spinning down the 
ringing grooves of change," may the time never come 
when the voices of orators shall be silenced in the 
councils of our people, or cease to mingle with the 
chime of the Sabbath bells when men are gathered 
together to worship God; but on, on to the time 
when the shining fabric of our universe shall crumble 
into unmeaning chaos and take itself where "oblivion 
broods and memory forgets" ; on, on, until the dark- 
ness shall come down over all like "the pall of a past 
world," the stars wander darkling in eternal space, 
rayless and pathless, and the icy earth like a "lump 
of death," a "chaos of hard clay," swings "blind and 
blackening in the moonless air," may the power of 
oratory survive and wield its mighty influence, conse- 
crated to the cause of liberty and truth, and pointing 
the way to where the Angel of Progress, leaning over 
the far horizon of the infinite future, beckons man- 
kind forward and upward and onward forever. 



O. Alphonso Smith 19 

LITERATURE AND A LOST CAUSE 

C. ALPHONSO SMITH 

Professor of the English Language and Dean of the Gradu- 
ate Department in the University of North Carolina 

[The concluding part of an address on "Southern 
Literature," first delivered before the Legislature of Louis- 
iana, June 12, 1902.] 

It is the merest truism to say that the War meant 
far more to the South than to the North. To the 
North it meant the preservation of the Union, the 
abolition of slavery, and the well-nigh unbroken as- 
cendancy of a political party. To the South it meant 
decimated families, smoking homesteads, and the 
passing forever of a civilization unique in recorded 
history. But literature loves a lost cause, provided 
honor be not lost. 

Hector, the leader of the defeated Trojans, Hec- 
tor, the warrior slain in defense of his own fireside, 
is the most princely figure that the Greek Homer has 
portrayed. The Roman Virgil is proud to trace the 
lineage of his people, not back to the victorious 
Greeks, but on to the defeated Trojans. England's 
greatest poet-laureate finds his amplest inspiration, not 
in the victories of his Saxon ancestors over King Ar- 
thur, but in King Arthur himself and his peerless 
Knights of the Round Table, vanquished though they 
were in battle. And so it has always been : the brave 
but unfortunate reap always the richest measure of 
literary immortality. 

Do you remember that tender scene in "King 
Lear," where Cordelia stands in the presence of her 
father, despised, disinherited, forsaken ? As her cow- 
ardly suitor slinks from the room because Cordelia's 
inheritance has been lost, the king of France steps for- 
ward and on bended knee says : 



20 Oratory of the South 

"Fairest Cordelia, that are,., most rich, being poor, 
Most choice, forsaken, and most loved, despised; 
Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon. 
Be it lawful, I take up what's cast away." 

And so when brave men have fought for the right 
as God gave them to see the right, but fought in 
vain; when the bugles call no more, when the ban- 
ners are tattered and trailing, when the shouts of vic- 
tory are forever hushed, and the miserere of defeat 
is chanted over the graves of a buried army, when 
all, all, is lost save honor, — it is then that the muses 
of poetry and song stoop from their celestial heights 
and lift the dear old lost cause up, up, into the un- 
changing realm of literature. 

More than two thousand years ago Leonidas and 
his three hundred Spartans dared to confront the 
countless hordes of Xerxes. Defeated? Annihilated! 
But on the pages of the world's literature and wher- 
ever heroic hearts respond to heroic deeds, Leonidas 
and his three hundred still stand outlined against that 
Grecian sky, an incentive to valor. More than fifty 
years ago Lord Cardigan and his six hundred made 
the immortal charge at Balaklava. Defeated? Anni- 
hilated! But on the^pages of the world's literature 
and wherever heroic hearts respond to heroic deeds, 
Lord Cardigan and his dauntless six hundred are 
riding yet. More than forty years ago Pickett and 
his devoted followers made their heroic charge at 
Gettysburg. Defeated? Annihilated! But the time 
is coming — it is nearly here — when on the pages of 
the world's literature and wherever heroic hearts shall 
respond to heroic deeds, Pickett and his peerless band 
shall charge and charge forever. 

Thus if history means anything, it means that, as 
the years go by, our national literature is to be more 
and more permeated by Southern history and South- 



William Gordon McCabe 21 

ern traditions. Then, and not till then, will be taken 
away our reproach — that of having a history, but an 
unwritten and an unknown history: for Southern 
history will then have been written in the living let- 
ters of a nation's song and story. 



PURITAN AND CAVALIER 

WILLIAM GORDON M'CABE 

Virginia orator and educator 

[Extracts from a speech delivered at the banquet of the 
New England Society, New York City, December 22, 
1899. Of this speech the reporter for the New York Sun 
said: "Everybody who attended the New England dinner 
came away from the banquet hall commenting on the speech 
of Professor William Gordon McCabe, of Richmond, which 
was the hit of the evening."] 

Gentlemen of the New England Society: 

Your President, in introducing me, has, with cruel 
facetiousness, spoken of me as one of the "heroes of 
the war." It is true that down in my own country 
you may hear people (utterly void of imagination, 
and envious, perhaps, of my "re-cord") shamelessly 
declare that the only people I've ever slain were some 
of my oldest friends, whom I've talked to death with 
stories that belong to the Pliocene period of anec- 
dotal development, or which, at the very latest, may 
have "cheered the Aryan hordes on their weary west- 
ward march from the tablelands of Asia," and that 
the only weapon of which I possess an easy and a 
natural mastery is that osseous one which Samson 
wielded with such deadly effect against the Philistines. 
Never but once before, I confess, have I ever been 
remotely alluded to by my ungrateful countrymen as 
"a hero of the war." And that was years and years 
ago, when some of us here to-night looked at each 



22 Oratory of the South 

other only along the deadly barrels of burnished steel, 
and when my wildest dreams never pictured a time 
when I should gaze, as I am gazing to-night, full into. 
New England eyes, brimming over with such kindli- 
ness and gracious welcome as make even an unrepent- 
ant rebel feel thoroughly at home. 

Thank God, old "comrades of the other side," the 
only "bead" drawn here to-night is not the bead of 
wary marksmen along gleaming steel, but comes 
bubbling up in sparkling beauty from these foaming 
beakers, wherein we pledge — not only lip, but heart — 
the prosperity and honor of our common country, 
greeting each other with the glad hail which stirs our 
hearts as deeply here to-night as when, well-nigh two 
thousand years ago, falling from the lips of quiring 
angels, it stirred the hearts of startled shepherds 
watching their flocks on the dim Judean hills under 
the shimmering stars — "Peace on earth, good will 
towards men." 

Every one of your distinguished orators has in- 
sisted (directly or by implication) that the Pilgrims 
really founded and shaped the destinies of our nation, 
and that but for New England patriotism and Puri- 
tan devotion to duty and to principle that little revolt 
of '76 would have proved somewhat of a fiasco. 

God forbid that, here or elsewhere, I should seek 
to abate one jot or one tittle of the debt that the na- 
tion owes to stubborn New England grit and saga- 
cious New England statecraft. But as in matrimony, 
the point of view of May and the point of view of 
December are not always easily reconcilable, and 
sometimes end in the divorce courts, so may it be in 
post-prandial oratory. In your December oratory, as 
here to-night, you naturally have unfolded to you the 
New England point of view. But come down to 
Virginia and clink glasses with me in May, when we 
meet to celebrate (in far more Puritanical fashion 



William Gordon McCabe 23 

than this) the anniversary of the first permanent 
English settlement in America, yonder at Jamestown, 
where, more than a year before the landing of the 
Mayflower, was convened the first legislative as- 
sembly in the New World, and you will hear our 
after-dinner orators unblushingly declare that, when 
the dun war-cloud lowered in the East, and the fool- 
ish policy of Lord North had denied the chartered 
liberties of our "Old Dominion" and her sister col- 
onies of New England — that it was a Virginian, 
George Mason, who drew the immortal Bill of 
Rights ; that it was a Virginian, Richard Henry Lee, 
who first moved in the Continental Congress that 
"these colonies are, and of right ought to be, free 
and independent States"; that it was a Virginian, 
Thomas Jefferson, who drafted the Declaration of 
Independence, and that it was that glorious "rebel" 
and great Virginian, George Washington, who made 
it good by his sword. 

Come to us with your memories of Lexington, 
where that shot was fired that went echoing round 
the world ; come to us with the story of Bunker Hill, 
where the old Puritan spirit blazed high and defeat 
wore the mantle of glory, and we will stand uncov- 
ered before yonder noble monument in Richmond, 
from which looks down upon us in imperishable 
bronze "the counterfeit presentment" of the nation's 
greatest son, seated in easy majesty on his mettled 
steed, serene and resolute, such as he may have 
seemed to his ragged New England soldiery and his 
own "Virginian Riflemen," clad in deerskin leggings 
and fringed hunting-shirt, as he rode slowly down his 
lines, under the Cambridge elms, on that summer's 
morning more than a century ago — while grouped 
beneath him stand the heroic figures of those great 
Virginians who shared with him and with your 
fathers the peril and the glory of guiding the new 



24 Oratory of the South 

nation out of the dark and narrow bondage of a royal 
tyranny into the broad sunlight of republican freedom. 

I can but think, sir, that a blending of the two 
points of view gives us the truer perspective as to our 
national development. ' What you call the Puritan 
spirit, of which you are justly proud, has never, I 
think, been confined to New England alone; nor do 
I believe that Virginia can claim exclusive heritage 
in the gracious and generous qualities of the Cavalier. 
Isn't it, after all, the American spirit, differentiated 
by environment? 

Environment is, as we all know, a potent factor in 
national development, and I have often speculated as 
to what would have been the result had the May- 
flower, owing to her lost "reckoning," "fetched" as 
far south as she did north of her original destination, 
and had that cargo of "godly kickers" landed at 
Jamestown instead of at Plymouth. 

In the light of alleged events in 1814, I can't help 
fancying what a tremendous lot of "Secessionists" all 
of you would have been in '61, with a wealth of his- 
toric argument as to "strict construction" that no 
Yankee cavalier could ever have met successfully ex- 
cept with the heavier artillery. Grant and Sher- 
man would inevitably have been "rebels"; Wendell 
Phillips would have threatened some "Bob" Toombs 
of Massachusetts that he would yet call the roll of his 
slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill Monument, and 
Jefferson Davis of "Brookline" would have sauntered 
across Boston Common, humming a stave about 
hanging John Andrew "on a sour apple tree." 

Even as things were, the "typical Puritan" of our 
time never saw Plymouth Rock, and no drop of Pil- 
grim blood coursed in his veins, — he who "stood like 
a stone wall" in the shock of battle, — the perfect type 
of that glorious Scotch-Irish stock from which he 
sprung; that dauntless race, in whose heart beat so 



William Gordon McCabe 25 

strong the fear of God that there was left no room 
for fear of any other thing; while our ideal Southern 
cavalier, "from spur to plume the very star of chiv- 
alry," Albert Sydney Johnston, the idol of his 
Southern soldiery, was of purest New England strain 
on both sides of his house. 

But however apparently irreconcilable are the 
points of view of May and of December, I think I 
can safely say that their differences will never again 
be aired in the divorce court. The Great Judge of 
all, sitting as the God of Battles, has decreed that 
they must go back to their billing and cooing again, 
and Winter — the hoary old reprobate — I may blush- 
mgly remark, will still be found "lingering in the lap 
of May." 

Of course, they will go on saying hard things to 
each other from time to time, but every man happily 
married knows that that is a mere safety valve to 
what the old parsons used to call "a true union blessed 
of God." 

I have always heard that one of the greatest 
charms of this New England Dinner is that a man 
may speak his mind here with utmost frankness and 
need feel no fear of giving offense, so long as he ut- 
ters his honest convictions in courteous and temperate 
fashion. Well, honest confession being good for 
the soul, I will say that I was not one of those 
"jingoes" who clamored for war with Spain. But 
as old Billy Stovins, of Culpeper County, in my State 
said, when his fourth wife died (a strapping young 
country girl) and the boys (with whom old Billy 
played "short cards") came over to condole with him : 
"Boys," sobbed old Billy, burying his hickory-nut 
face in a bandanna as big as the maintopsail of an 
old-fashioned man-of-war, "boys, I'm not only 
grieved, but I'm mortified." And then catching sight 
of his wife's twin sister, a buxom beauty, as she 



26 Oratory of the South 

flitted through the room, he added, "But, boys, I'm 
getting sorter reconciled." 

Well, I'm "getting sorter reconciled." 
Not all the glories of Manila Bay or of Santiago 
would have wrought this reconciliation, but I now be- 
lieve, and I think you believe with me, that this 
Spanish War has definitively brought about two re- 
sults which have gone far to justify in my eyes all the 
blood and all the treasure expended by the nation to 
secure them; one — and that the paramount one — 
the thorough confidence now reposed by the whole 
North and West in the deep-seated patriotism of the 
South; the other, the tightening of the blood-tie be- 
tween our young Western Giant and that grand old 
motherland beyond the seas, home nest of Puritan 
and Cavalier alike. 



VISIONS OF THE CIVIL WAR 

NATHANIEL E. HARRIS 

Of the Macon (Ga.) Bar 

[Extract from an address' delivered before the Confed- 
erate Veterans in reunion, at Louisville, Ky., June 15, 
1905.] 

Do you sometimes, comrades, in your waking hours 
behold as in a dream the armies of the South come 
back to life again, just as they appeared some forty- 
odd years ago, when they stood up all over this land 
in battle line to resist the invasion of their homes? 
How many times have you seen, as in a vision of the 
night, those magnificent armies marching along the 
dusty highways of Virginia, over the dun fields of 
Mississippi or Tennessee, or where the white cotton 
blooms hide the old red hills of Georgia, or the Texas 
prairies stretch away to the horizon, all officered and 



Nathaniel E. Harris 27 

ready and proud and victorious, as in the days for- 
ever gone? I can close my eyes and see again the 
iron squadrons of the Army of Northern Virginia 
as I once saw them rising up to take their places in 
the battle line. I can hear the bugle call of Stuart, 
of Lomax, and of Fitzhugh Lee, and I can see the 
plumed lines of cavalry ride forward to feel the foe 
and ascertain his strength. The old infantry columns 
are there, too, bronzed and powder-stained veterans 
of a hundred battles, for the boys are all in line, and 
at their head ride the generals, each in his appointed 
place as of yore. There is Jackson on the flank, and 
Longstreet and Hill in the center, while Ewell and 
Early and Gordon are riding to the front just like 
they used to do when you and I were there together. 

I can see the old battle flags, worn and bullet- 
scarred, and hear the drums' call to arms, the long 
roll beat, as the lines advance, and the pale faces of 
the men, set and stern, look out toward the wavering 
ranks of blue in the distance. Now I can see the 
march and the counter-march, the charge and the 
counter-charge, and the red line of fire on the battle 
front. Anon, the whirl of platoons and battalions, 
the shrill crack of the rifle, the hoarse roar of the 
cannon as the great guns are unlimbered, and the 
bronzed artillerymen dash into place for the awful 
death grapple. They dress their lines, these old gen- 
erals, and salute their tattered veterans once again. 

Jackson, on the old sorrel, rides down the line, with 
the battle light on his face — and hear how the boys 
cheer as they catch sight of his rusty uniform and his 
old slouch cap ! There is A. P. Hill come to life 
again from the ditches of Petersburg, and D. H. 
Hill, and Pickett, and Pendleton, and Rhodes, and 
Anderson, and Ramseur, and Bartow, and Thomas, 
and Cobb, and Evans, and Benning, and Doles, and 
Walker, ordering the phantom legions into battle, 



28 Oratory of the South 

while the red cross waves at the head of the column 
and the shouts of the dauntless heroes break again the 
long silence of the grave. And lo! out from their 
midst, as at the Wilderness, or Chancellorsville, or 
Spottsylvania, comes the great commander, God's 
vice-gerent in Fame's grand Legion of Honor, with 
his sword newly drawn, and the fire of his mighty 
soul shining in his face, to lead his ranks to victory 
against the foe ! 

I can always see this army in the sky, this phantom 
host of dead heroes ; they are my comrades, mine to 
love and remember. Earth's hate and deadliest op- 
position can never take them from me. God bless 
their heroic memories to-day ! 

"On Fame's eternal camping ground 

Their silent tents are spread, 
And glory guards with solemn round 
The bivouac of the dead." 

It was my fortune once to be present at the burn- 
ing of a great city. The chances of war had brought 
our opposing armies together in its midst, and the 
dread implements with which men destroy each other 
were busied for a long time in the terrible work of 
carnage. Shot and shell aimed with deadly precision 
crossed in mid-heavens, while the lurid flashes from 
the blackened mouths of the monster guns lit up the 
scene, and, mingling with the roar of battle, the yells 
of the combatants, the shrieks of the wounded and 
dying, added a terrible grandeur to the scene which 
no pen can ever portray. In the midst of the fight 
the cry rang out that the city was on fire. The 
flames had already gained such headway before their 
discovery as to defy all effort to stay them. Instinc- 
tively, therefore, the two armies ceased fighting and 
retired to the neighboring hills to await the result of 
the conflagration. Here the sight which met the eye 



Nathaniel E. Harris 2 9 

was thrilling beyond description. Huge lines of 
smoke rolled upward, broke and deployed in mid- 
heaven and dashed the darkened sunshine from a 
thousand jagged edges into the face of the beholders. 
Tongues of flame lapped the air, and flakes of fire 
and cinder, like foam flecks, leaped far out of sight 
into the heavens. Lances of light sprang from the 
burning pile and stabbed the shrouding canopy of 
smoke, while, red and glaring and serpent-like, the 
long arms of the conflagration stretched away into 
the sea of sky. Blacker and blacker grew the canopy, 
louder and louder the roar of the conflagration, red- 
der and redder the arms of flame that essayed the 
blue empyrean. Now bursting the pall of smoke, the 
ragged flame licked the skies, then reeling and totter- 
ing like a drunken man, it bent far down toward the 
earth, while the pent thunders of its wrathful sweep 
broke in awe-inspiring grandeur on the ear. It re- 
minded one of the burning of a sin-doomed earth, 
when, as in the Apocalyptic vision, the Archangel 
bearing the trump shall tear loose the planet from the 
hinges of the universe and hurl it into the smoking 
furnace of its last conflagration. 

But awful as was the scene, it was destined to a 
yet more fearful culmination. Mark the operation of 
one of nature's mighty laws: While the mountains 
of smoke and the giant heads of flame were swaying 
up the steeps of heaven, the distant horizon became 
overcast. The clouds that hung on the crest of the 
western mountain came scudding across the waste to- 
ward the doomed city. A dull and sullen roar, pre- 
cursor of the tempest rushing to restore the disturbed 
equilibrium, broke on the ears of the armies. In an 
almost inconceivable space of time the tempest 
rushed down upon the city. And now was added a 
war of the elements to the battle of the flames. 
Flashes of lightning leaped from the smoky caverns 



30 Oratory of the South 

of the skies, while the roar and crash of the thunder, 
peal on peal, hushed for a moment the din of the con- 
flagration and fell on the ears of the awe-stricken 
armies like the trump of heaven's embattled legions 
sounding the doom of the earth. Down in weird 
sheets the waters poured, torrent after torrent, and 
deluge after deluge, as if old ocean breaking his 
bounds had hurled his massive billows upon the track 
of the burning city. Men's faces looked pale as the 
light from above met the light of the burning piles 
beneath and played in fantastic wreaths on the sway- 
ing masses of smoke and ashes rising on the tempest's 
wing. Now, indeed, was a war of fire and water, and 
the tempest's piping voice urged on the combatants, 
while the lightnings, in trailing sheets of flame, hung 
out their banners to the struggling elements. Down 
came the rushing torrents, up poured the beleaguered 
flames, and blackened walls and charred columns and 
swaying domes marked the scene of the deadly strug- 
gle. Heaven's artillery boomed and earth replied 
with falling towers and roaring flames. On each 
side the serried columns sallied forth to grapple in 
the contest. In mid-air they met, and hurtling wings 
and fiery balls scurried over the battle plains, — now 
right, now left, now back, now forth, like leaping 
fiends, the earth-born warriors grappled with the arms 
of heaven. Nor was the battle long in doubt. Soon 
heaven's resistless force swept the fields in triumph. 
The massive clouds from out their arsenals poured 
down their torrents of flood and flame, and soon the 
scarred and blackened bastions that fortressed the 
earth-born foe lay quenched in silence and in ruins. 
Heaven's watery armies had fought to save men's 
homes. 

A rainbow, signal of the victor storm, hung its 
wavy painted pinions on the cloud's ascending ram- 
parts, and the armies fought no more that day. 



Benjamin F. Jonas 31 

So too, within our homes, within our nation: the 
storm must meet the storm, and often out of the 
fierceness of the tempest's wrath, and the fury of 
the downpouring elements, will come the safety of 
our earthly hopes, and the rainbow of advancing 
peace will girdle the tempest's retreating ranks! 



THE CONFEDERATE DEAD 

BENJAMIN F. JONAS 

Formerly United States Senator from Louisiana 

[Extracts from an address at the laying of the corner 
stone of a monument to the memory of the Confederate 
dead, at Baton Rouge, La., February 22, 1886.] 

The scars left by civil war soon heal and fade 
away, as does the memory of the privations and suf- 
ferings which it entailed. The angry controversies 
which precede and the bitterness which follows pass 
away with the generation whose quarrels necessitated 
the stern arbitrament of war. New generations of 
people of the same blood come together as compan- 
ions in the same walks of life, and join together in the 
same aims, aspirations, and ambitions, forgetful or 
regardless of the quarrel which divided their fathers, 
the causes for which have passed into history. 

In our own country the time has arrived when the 
hateful memories of the war can no longer be evoked 
to excite political prejudice or passion. The sur- 
vivors, old soldiers on either side, fraternize together 
on all occasions and "fight their battles o'er again" 
with mutual pride in the valor of their country- 
men. They lend assistance to deck the graves of 
their departed antagonists, and aid each other in 
honoring the memory of their dead. In the mean- 
while a new generation has grown to manhood, who 



32 Oratory of the South 

believe that these events belong to history and have 
no part to play in the active business or politics of 
the present hour. 

I am not here to enter into a discussion of the 
causes of the war, or upon a vindication of those 
whose statesmanship or want of statesmanship 
brought it about. The Confederate soldiers had 
little to do with the causes of the war, and few of 
them shared in the political controversies which pre- 
ceded it. 

An angry and excited presidential election, in which 
a great number of them were not voters ; the triumph 
of a sectional candidate, who carried all of the North- 
ern States and who did not have an electoral ticket 
or receive a vote in the South ; a profound alarm and 
feeling of apprehension for the future of the coun- 
try, which prevailed throughout the South, and was 
shared by the most conservative and Union-loving 
men of that section ; while those of the more extreme 
views, perhaps a majority, considered that the only 
safety for the South, its liberties and institutions, 
could be found in immediate separation from the 
Union; a short, hurried and impassioned canvass 
before the people, the issue being narrowed down to 
immediate secession or co-operation; the election of 
conventions ; the adoption of ordinances of secession ; 
the solemn withdrawal of Senators and Representa- 
tives from Congress, following the action of their 
States; the seizure of the forts and arsenals of the 
national government; the formation of a provisional 
government; the firing on Sumter; the call to arms, 
North and South — all of these strange things passed 
with the rapidity of a dream, and it seems like a 
dream as we look back upon them after the lapse of 
twenty-five years. 

And so went forth the Southern youth to battle, 
full of hope, inspired with confidence, thinking to re- 



Benjamin F. Jonas 33 

turn conqueror after a war of ninety days. What 
knew he, or cared he, for the causes of the war? His 
country was imperiled, his State was in danger of in- 
vasion, an enemy was advancing upon his home, and 
it was his duty to meet and assist in driving back the 
invader. 

"Theirs not to reason why 
Theirs but to do and die." 

And the ninety summer days were lengthened into 
four years. And the glamour of war was gone, and 
all of its romance; and, in exchange, its bitter, stern 
realities — the long campaigns, the bloody, indecisive 
battles, the forced marches, the summer's heat, the 
winter's cold, the privations, the wounds, the sick- 
ness, the prison, the retreat, the defeat, the loss of 
hope. Ah, the sufferings and ills which these men 
bore bravely during those four long years ! And as 
their columns wasted from the ravages of disease and 
death they were recruited from home, until nearly all 
except the occupants of the cradle and the grave had 
gone to the front. And then the war ended, and the 
survivors turned their steps homeward, ragged, 
wounded, maimed, gaunt, hungry, and hopeless. 

In memory I see again these regiments and bat- 
talions starting for the front, with music and banners 
and all the panoply of war; and memory brings back 
to me, and to all of you, the recollection of loved 
faces and brave hearts of many who were marching 
in the ranks, and who are absent from our gathering 
to-day, who will respond to life's roll call no more 
forever. We cannot strew flowers upon their scat- 
tered graves; we cannot mark their unknown rest- 
ing-places with stone or monument ; we cannot gather 
their earthly spoil into beautiful mausoleums or cities 
of the dead; but we erect this monument in their 
honor that all people in all time to come may know 



34 Oratory of the South 

that the soldiers who died for the Confederate cause 
are not without love and honor and reverence in the 
land which gave them birth: 

''Rest on, embalmed and sainted dead, 

Dear as the blood ye gave, 
No impious footstep here shall tread 

The herbage of your grave; 
Nor shall your glory be forgot 

While Fame her record keeps, 
Or Honor points the hallowed spot 

Where Valor proudly sleeps. 

"Yon marble minstrel's voiceless stone, 
In deathless song shall tell, 
When many a vanished age hath flown, 

The story how ye fell; 
Nor wreck, nor change, nor winter's blight, 

Nor Time's remorseless doom, 
Shall dim one ray of glory's light, 
That gilds your deathless tomb." 



THE WOMEN OF THE CONFEDERACY 

CHARLES SCOTT 

Of the Rosedale (Miss.) Bar 

[Extract from an address delivered on "Confederate 
Day'' at the [Mississippi Chautauqua, Crystal Springs, Miss., 
July 30, 1906.] 

Yet a little while and the last of the thin gray line 
will cross over the river to rest beneath the shade of 
the trees. These heroes of the lost cause should be 
and will be remembered and revered throughout all 
the recurring years. Here, as in all acts of grace and 
kindliness, where the heart speaks best and surest, 
it has been the province of the fair daughters of the 
South to point the way. And so Decoration Day 
comes to us as a direct inspiration from their pure 
hearts, and if the truth were known I dare say that 



Charles Scott 35 

some noble Southern woman first suggested "Confed- 
erate Day" for this Chautauqua. And so it is with 
the stately monuments to the Confederate dead found 
in all parts of the Sunny South. They, too, are the 
noble work of our Southern women, inspired by their 
devoted love and consecrated by their sacred tears. 

There is, my countrymen, just one thing in all the 
world better and truer and nobler than the Southern 

soldier, and that — God bless her now and always is 

the Southern woman. We can never hope, gentlemen 
of the South, to adequately express our gratitude to 
these noble women for their labor of love. It is im- 
possible. But Southern chivalry and Southern man- 
hood will be recreant to their loftiest ideals and tra- 
ditions if we fail to erect, at some suitable place in the 
South, to be hereafter selected, a chaste and beauti- 
ful monument of the purest marble in honor of the 
women of the South, who have already erected thou- 
sands of monuments to its men. I propose, therefore, 
my friends, that Mississippi have the honor of taking 
the first decisive step in this noble and patriotic work. 
She was first in chartering an institution of learn- 
ing for the higher education of young women ; first 
to remove the common law disabilities of married 
women, to be followed by a removal of all their dis- 
abilities; and she was the first to establish an institu- 
tion supported by the State for the advanced educa- 
tion of young women. Why not first in the patriotic 
movement to erect a monument to the noble women 
of the Confederacy? It will partly express to pres- 
ent and future generations our love and admiration 
of those who are perhaps more deserving of our grati- 
tude than the Confederate soldier himself. When 
complete, let us chisel on the polished surface of the 
spotless marble shaft the beautiful words used by the 
revered chieftain of the lost cause in the dedication of 
his great work on the Southern Confederacy: 



36 Oratory of the South 

"To the women of the Confederacy, whose pious 
ministrations to our wounded soldiers smoothed the 
last hours of those who died far from the objects of 
their tenderest love; whose domestic labor contrib- 
uted much to supply the wants of our defenders in 
the field; whose jealous faith in our cause showed a 
guiding star undimmed by the darkest clouds of war; 
whose fortitude sustained them under all the priva- 
tions to which they were subjected; whose annual 
tribute expresses their enduring grief, love and rev- 
erence for our sacred dead, and whose patriotism will 
teach their children to emulate the deeds of our revo- 
lutionary sires," this monument is dedicated by the 
people of the South. 



TRIBUTE TO THE WOMEN OF THE 
SOUTH 

ALBERT H. WHITFIELD 

Chief Justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court 

[Extract from an address delivered at the dedication of 
Mississippi's new capitol, June 3, 1903.] 

God has so ordained that man may meet the brunt 
of some sudden storm, may live through and master 
some single great crisis; but it is woman alone who 
can wear through the supreme crises of individual or 
national life, by the endurance, the fortitude, and the 
patience which she alone possesses. 

And so in the midst of the gloom the woman of 
the South rose resplendent to the occasion. She re- 
membered that grief sanctified makes great. ' What 
though she stood amid the wreck of desolated and 
dismantled homes with the bright relics of princely 
fortunes strewn ruthlessly about her — the qualities 
of the eternal granite were integrated into her endur- 



Albert H. Whitfield 37 

ance. What though her household penates lay dashed 
to fragments on the hearthstone, her idols in the 
eternal silence, and the power of the despot attempted 
to bury, in the grave of the slain, the hopes of her 
country, set its seal upon the grave, rolled the rock 
upon the sepulcher and placed its watch. Her sub- 
lime faith has lived to see the resurrection angel of 
the South roll back the stone from the sepulcher, de- 
stroy the seal, break the fetters of political disability, 
shatter the bonds of the industrial, agricultural, and 
commercial subordination, and raise, radiant from 
the grave of the old, the figure of the new South, to 
stand in transfigured beauty, fronting the deepening 
glories of the twentieth century, "like the winged god 
breathing from his flight." 

She remembered that whatever was sublimest in 
the annals of Christianity looms o'er the ocean of 
time, like the northern lights, more resplendent for 
the surrounding shadows. She recalled that what- 
ever is most glorious in the achievements of military 
heroes has been the triumphs of men who were 
cradled in storms and schooled by adversity. She 
remembered that whatever in literature is truly im- 
mortal, unvarying history proves the ripened product 
of intellects that have towered to the regions of per- 
petual sunlight through atmospheres dark with 
clouds and tempests ! And, remembering these 
things, she called her patience to her aid — she sum- 
moned her endurance to the tremendous task; she 
nerved the returning husband, or father, or son, to 
the herculean tasks of the years that have just receded 
from us. 'And to-day, women of the South, if there 
be hope in this land, it is due to your courage; if 
there be promise in the future, it is the result of your 
faith; and if, my countrymen and countrywomen, if, 
I say, in the years that are to come, when we who 
stand under this evening sky shall sleep the dreamless 



38 Oratory of the South 

slumber of the grave, when we shall no more be 
known amongst men, these Southern States shall fill 
with fifty millions of happy* men and women; if the 
Isthmian canal shall be gay with the merchantmen of 
every nation upon earth; if the Galveston of the 
future shall remember the Galveston of the tempest 
but as a nightmare dream; if New Orleans, and 
Mobile, and Savannah, and Charleston, and Wil- 
mington, and our own Gulfport and a hundred other 
marts shall become imperial "cities proud with spires 
and turrets crowned, in whose broad armed ports 
shall ride rich navies laughing at the storm"; if, 
above all that, and better than all that, literature, and 
religion, and art shall fill this land with temples 
and lyceums, and galleries glorious with immortal 
paintings and statuary, and with a knowledge univer- 
sally diffused — if, I repeat, that glorious day shall 
come to this land we love, the land of the magnolia, 
and the orange, the land of the mountain and the sea 
and of the tropic stars, the land of Lee and Jackson 
and Davis, if the coming years shall bring these 
splendors to this clime, it will be due, women of the 
South, to the deathless fidelity with wruch you have 
held fast to the principles of justice and right and 
truth, immutable and eternal, because of the pos- 
session of which God has made the heart of woman, 
in every age, the last repository of the faith of every 
creed and the patriotism of every land. 

Meet indeed it is, soldiers of the Confederacy, that 
your sons have determined to erect, in honor of the 
transcendent women of the South — who for forty 
years have annually covered the graves of your dead 
with the flowers and tears of fadeless affection — a 
monument, the noblest in its proportions, the most 
exquisite in its carvings, the loftiest in its inscriptions, 
affection has ever reared to make virtue immortal ! 
Let it rise in the purity of spotless white, against the 



John B.Gordon 39 

dark background of our national sorrows, high up 
into the serene heavens ! And through the ages to 
come, when garish day has gone, and with it the harsh 
clangor of commercialism, let the vast silences of 
the starry midnight steep it in holy, healing quiet ! 

And there through all time may those who shall 
continue to place honor above gold, principle above 
power, the reign of justice, and truth, and right 
above the hollow magnificence of perishing material- 
ism, be permitted, in the twilight of soothed feeling 
and softened remembrance, to catch, faint and far 
off though it be, the trembling refrain of the music 
of the Sunny South of old ! 



LAST DAYS OF THE CONFEDERACY 

JOHN B. GORDON 

Late Commander-in-chief of the United Confederate Vet- 
erans; formerly Governor of Georgia 

[Extract from a lecture under the above title, given 
many times on the lyceum platform.] 

My countrymen, I must be pardoned for saying 
that when I recall the uncomplaining suffering, the 
unbought and poorly paid patriotism, of those grand 
men, the American volunteers, who had no hope of 
personal honors, no stripes on their coats nor stars 
on their collars, who wore the knapsacks, trudged in 
the mud, leaving the imprint of their feet in their 
own blood on Virginia's snows — when I recall those 
men who stood in the forefront of the battle, fired 
the muskets, won the victories, and made the gen- 
erals, I would gladly write their names in characters 
of blazing stars that could never grow dim. 

I want to illustrate the life of a private. It will 
be remembered that that little stream, the Rapidan, 



40 Oratory of the South 

was for a long time the dividing line between the 
Union and Confederate armies. It was so near that 
the pickets of the two armies, by common consent, 
refused to fire at each other. When they did shoot, 
they shot jokes instead of bullets across the river at 
each other, and where the water was shallow 
they waded in and met each other in the middle and 
swapped Southern tobacco for Yankee coffee; and 
where the water was too deep to wade in, they sent 
those articles across in little boats. Thus those two 
fighting armies kept up for a long time their friendly 
and international commerce. So great was that com- 
merce that the commanders of both armies ordered 
it to stop. As a matter of course, the privates 
ignored the orders and went on trading. General 
Lee sent for me and said: "I want you to take 
charge of my picket line, sir, and break up that trad- 
ing." I rode along the picket lines, and as I came 
suddenly around the point of a hill, on one of my 
picket posts, before they dreamed I was in the neigh- 
borhood, I found an amount of confusion such as I 
had never witnessed. I asked, "What is the matter 
here, boys? What does all this mean?" "Nothing 
at all, sir; it is all right here; we assure you it is all 
right." I thought there was a good deal of a show- 
ing about it, and said so, when a bright fellow, who 
saw I had some doubt on my brain, stepped to the 
front to get his comrades out of the scrape, and he 
began — he was a stammering fellow — and he began : 
"Oh, yes, G-g-g-general ; it is all r-r-r-right; we were 
just getting r-r-ready, so we could present arms to 
you if you should come along after awhile." Of 
course I knew there was not a word of truth in it, but 
I began to ride away. Looking back suddenly, I saw 
the high weeds on the bank of this little river shak- 
ing. I asked this fellow: "What is the matter with 
the weeds, sir? They seem to be in confusion too?" 



John B. Gordon 41 

Badly frightened now, he exclaimed: "Oh, G-g-gen- 
eral, there is nothing the matter with the weeds; 
the weeds are all right." I ordered: "Break down 
these weeds;" and there flat on the ground among 
those weeds was at least six feet of soldier, with 
scarcely any clothing on his person. I asked: 
"Where do you belong?" "Over yonder," he said, 
pointing to the Union army, "on the other side." 
"What are you doing here, sir?" "Well," he said, 
"General, I didn't think there was any harm in my 
coming over here and talking to the boys a little 
while." "What boys?" I asked. "These Johnnies," 
he said. I asked: "Don't you know we are in the 
midst of a great war, sir?" "Yes, General; I know 
we are having a war, but we are not fighting now." 
The idea of this Union boy, that because we were not 
this minute shooting each other to death it was a 
proper occasion to lay aside the arms and make a 
social visit, one army to the other, struck me as the 
most laughable kind of war I had ever heard of; 
and I could scarcely keep my face straight enough to 
give an order. But I summoned all the sternness of 
my nature, and said, "I will show you, sir, that this 
is war; I am going to march you through the coun- 
try and put you in prison." At that announcement 
my boys rushed to this fellow's defense. They 
gathered round me and said, "General, wait a min- 
ute; let us talk about it. You say you are going to 
send this Union boy to prison. Hold on, General; 
that won't do; that won't do at all; we invited this 
fellow over here, and we promised to protect him. 
Now, General, don't you see if you send him off to 
prison, you will ruin our Southern honor?" What 
could a commander do with such boys? I made the 
Union man stand up and said to him, "Now, sir, if 
I permit you to go back at the solicitation of these 
Confederates; will you solemnly promise me, on the 



42 Oratory of the South 

honor of a soldier " And he did not wait for 

me to finish my sentence. With a loud "Yes, sir," he 
leaped like a great bull-frog into the river and swam 
back. 

Now, my countrymen, I allude to that little inci- 
dent for a far higher purpose than mere amusement 
or entertainment. I want to submit a question in con- 
nection with it. Tell me, my countrymen, where else 
on earth could you find a scene like that in the midst 
of a long and bloody war between two hostile 
armies? Where else could you find it? Among 
what people would it be possible except among this 
glorious American people, uplifted by our free insti- 
tutions and by that Christian civilization which was 
born in heaven ? 

The Rapidan suggests another scene to which 
allusion has often been made since the war, but which, 
as illustrative also of the spirit of both armies, I may 
be permitted to recall in this connection. In the mel- 
low twilight of an April day the two armies were 
holding their dress parades on the opposite hills 
bordering the river. At the close of the parade a 
magnificent brass band of the Union army played 
with great spirit the patriotic airs, "Hail Columbia," 
and "Yankee Doodle." Whereupon the Federal 
troops responded with a patriotic shout. The same 
band then played the soul-stirring strains of "Dixie," 
to which a mighty response came from ten thousand 
Southern troops. A few moments later, when the 
stars had come out as witnesses and when all nature 
was in harmony, there came from the same band the 
old melody, "Home, Sweet Home." As its familiar 
and pathetic notes rolled over the water and thrilled 
through the spirits of the soldiers, the hills rever- 
berated with a thundering response from the united 
voices of both armies. What was there in this old, 
old music to so touch the chords of sympathy, so 



Stephen D. Lee 43 

thrill the spirits and cause the frames of brave men 
to tremble with emotion? It was the thought of 
home. To thousands, doubtless, it was the thought 
of that Eternal Home to which the next battle might 
be the gateway. To thousands of others it was the 
thought of their dear earthly home, where loved ones 
at that twilight hour were bowing round the family 
altar and asking God's care over the absent soldier 
boy. 



EULOGY OF GENERAL JOHN B. GORDON 

STEPHEN D. LEE 

Of Columbus, Miss.; Late Commander-in-Chief of the 
United Confederate Veterans 

[An address delivered at Atlanta, Ga., January 14, 1904.] 

General John B. Gordon, at the time of his death, 
was the most conspicuous and typical Confederate 
soldier living, the one of most distinguished per- 
sonal valor and the one nearest and dearest to the 
hearts of his living comrades. At the collapse of the 
Confederacy his services had marked him for higher 
rank and larger command. He was an ideal soldier 
and the idol of the troops he commanded or was 
associated with. His imposing and magnificent 
soldierly bearing, coupled with his splendid ringing 
voice, gave him a God-given talent not equaled or 
possessed by any other officer in the army — that of 
getting in front of his troops,^ and in a few ringing 
appeals inspiring, them almost to madness, and being 
able to lead them into the very jaws of death. I 
recently heard a distinguished professor of history 
say that in his study of the war he found there was 
only one prominent general in either army who, when 
he was in command or led a charge, had never been 



44 Oratory of the South 

defeated nor repulsed, and that general was John B. 
Gordon. 

As a citizen and patriot and statesman his career 
was as conspicuous and successful as had been his 
record as a soldier. In Congress, in a most trying 
period, with Hill, Lamar, Gibson, and others, he 
placed the entire State under lasting obligations to 
him for his wisdom, patience, and fortitude under 
great provocation. He was an able Governor of 
Georgia. He did his full duty in peace as well as 
war, and in his later years, while as loyal to the 
tender memories of the Confederacy as the most 
loyal, he, after restoring his allegiance, set an ex- 
ample of loyalty to our great, reunited American 
nation. He virtually became the great apostle of 
reconciliation and obliteration of sectional feeling 
between the North and South. No one could move 
the masses as he did, by appeals to patriotism and 
pride of sections and nation, and Providence blessed 
him in prolonging his life to see the fruits of his 
labors in bringing about better feeling. 

But it was in our great fraternal association of 
Confederate Veterans that he appeared greatest and 
most beloved. He was for thirteen years, since its 
origin, its first and only Commander. His leadership 
and wise administration, with the aid of his splendid 
Chief of Staff, General George Moorman, gave it 
shape and success. His hold on and influence over 
the old soldiers when he appeared among them or 
rose to speak was wonderful to behold. Even a 
motion of his hand brought silence in the great re- 
unions, when no one else could arrest attention. He 
loved the old soldiers; they knew it, and they loved 
him in return. No one who witnessed the scene at 
the Nashville reunion, where he attempted to resign 
his commission as Commander, will ever forget it. 
He was, by spontaneous and wild acclamation, com- 



John Sharp Williams 45 

missioned for life as leader and Commander. I 
doubt if any other man ever had a greater and more 
effective demonstration of love and confidence. Nor 
the scene at Louisville, where he raised his voice, 
amid great excitement, in favor of conservative bear- 
ing toward the veterans of the North when they sent 
friendly greeting. No living Confederate can fill 
his place in the affections, admiration, and love of his 
comrades as he filled it. 

His private life was pure and spotless and an ex- 
ample to every American citizen. His devotion to 
his wife and family was beautiful in the extreme. 
He always tried to make his wife the partner of his 
triumphs and popularity, as she had been his guar- 
dian angel when wounded or laid on beds of sickness. 

He was an all-around great man, a distinguished 
and valiant soldier, an eminent statesman, an author 
and great orator, and a useful and public-spirited 
citizen. I know no man more beloved and popular 
among the people of the State, and perhaps he was 
more popular at the North than any other Southern 
man. /___ — • — 



A SOUTHERN GENTLEMAN 

JOHN SHARP WILLIAMS 

United States Senator from Mississippi 

[Extract from an address commemorative of Hon. Ed- 
ward C. Walthall, delivered in the House of Representa- 
tives, February 25, 1899.] 

Every people, Mr. Speaker, in every age has had 
its ideal of true manliness. ■•' The ideal is the expres- 
sion in popular thought of that which all in their 
better moments would like to be. One-tenth of man- 
kind may mold themselves in original casts — nine- 



46 Oratory of the South 

tenths mold themselves by conscious or unconscious 
imitation of that which they love and revere as per- 
sonified in others, either living or dead; this is the 
excusable sense in which men are and always will be 
hero worshipers. He who is not in some highest 
sense a hero worshiper is either a genius, of whom 
there are few, or a self worshiper, of whom there are 
too many. 

The ideal of a people is, of course, reached by very 
few; it is reasonably approximated by many; it is 
striven for by nearly all, who are made better and 
nobler by the striving; it is rendered ridiculous in its 
over-assertion or its unreasonable emphasis by some 
others ; sometimes rendered hateful by those false at 
heart to what they outwardly assume. 

The ideal of the Italian is perfect art — the very 
word which formerly meant manliness in Italy now 
means art in Italian; the ideal of the French, mili- 
tary glory; of the English, unaffected honesty of 
deed and speech — its misunderstood consummation 
sometimes mere bluntness and boorishness. The 
ideal of the Southerner, before the war absolutely and 
now predominantly, is that character which we ex- 
press by the word "gentleman." The injunction of 
the father to the son was: "Be a gentleman." The 
prayer of the mother was that her boy might, "first 
of all, be a gentleman." If she held up in former 
times George Washington, in the latter times Robert 
E. Lee, as the first of Americans and a fit pattern for 
the molding of all Americans, and therefore of her 
own children, it was primarily because each in his day 
was "the first gentleman of his day." 

The word must be understood, not in the English 
sense as a man of gentle blood, but in the Southern 
sense, as a man of lionlike manliness in deed, of 
womanlike gentleness in manner, of charitable con- 
sideration for all, and of liberality in all things. 



John Sharp Williams 47 

The gentleman combined perfect and unfailing cour- 
tesy toward all women and all worthy men with per- 
fect and unfailing courage, whether in private quarrel 
or in public strife. He might be rich or he might be 
poor — Southerners neither cared nor asked. Happier 
for himself if the former were his condition, but "a 
gentleman still," as the phrase went, whatever his 
financial condition, and therefore entitled to the un- 
questioning respect, confidence, and consideration of 
all men and to the love and devotion of any good 
woman. He might be well born, or born of obscure 
parents. That question, unlike the other, might be 
asked, but the answer made no difference if only the 
father were honest and not a coward and the mother 
were pure. 

The ideal gentleman was always honest; spoke the 
truth; faced his enemy; fought him if necessary, 
never quarreled with him nor talked about him ; rode 
well; shot well; used chaste and correct English; 
insulted no man — bore no insult from any; was 
studiously kind to his inferiors, especially to his 
slaves; cordially hospitable to his equals; courteous 
to his superiors, if he acknowledged any; he scorned 
a demagogue, but loved his people, and held it mean 
to prefer any class or individual interest, most of all 
his own, to that of the masses of his countrymen. He 
must be ready at any time, when needful, to lay his 
life down, not only for his own honor's sake, but, 
more promptly yet, for his country's, his State's, or 
his community's sake, and that, too, regardless of the 
dictates of his own private judgment as to the wis- 
dom or unwisdom of the quarrel. It was his duty to 
try to guide his people in what he considered the right 
path; but if he failed, it was mean and selfish not to 
follow them and, if need be, die with them. He was 
sometimes accused of being an aristocrat; but if so, 
he belonged to that aristocracy which holds itself 



48 Oratory of the South 

servant to the maxim noblesse oblige. In his private 
relations he was perfect in courtesy to all ; he exacted 
perfect courtesy from all, to himself and to those de- 
pendent upon him. 

This was the ideal. 

It is needless to' say, Mr. Speaker, that with an 
ideal so high and so exalted as this which I have 
described, but a small percentage of men of any race, 
in any section of country, or at any time of the 
world's history, in any state of human evolution thus 
far reached, could succeed in fully attaining to it and 
in living it. 

And yet General Edward C. Walthall, the man to 
whose memory we pay tribute to-day, attained to its 
full measure and lived it — lived its constant, not its 
fitful, impersonation. 

He was in war, serving where rude shocks leave 
little room for the courtesies of life; in his family; 
at the bar; on the stump; at the board, where the 
filled wine glass invites carelessness of speech and 
action; among his friends; among his political op- 
ponents — I will not say among his enemies, for I do 
not know that he ever had any — not only always a 
self-contained, courteous, intelligent, broad-minded, 
truth-loving, brave, loyal, charitable, and patriotic 
gentleman, but he so lived that he deserved to have 
inscribed on his tombstone the epitaph, "Prince of 
gentlemen." 

At his funeral there was no wailing, no noisy ex- 
hibition of grief; of flowers, and love, and tear- 
dimmed eyes there was an abundance. In speaking 
for myself I think I speak for others when I say that 
the eyes were not dimmed so much because the stain- 
less gentleman was gone. There had been nothing 
to regret in his death, as there had been nothing to 
regret in his life. It was because we knew how far 
short the rest of us had fallen from the life which he 



John Sharp Williams 49 

lived — the life of the pure, gentle, lion-hearted, 
Southern gentleman, provincial perhaps, but noble 
always. It was because he was almost the last of 
a long line of Mississippians of historic type and 
fame. 

The old historic ideal about which the Southern 
life revolved, and which had furnished the link of 
connection between the several stages of the evolu- 
tionary development of its civilization, is, they say, 
losing its molding force. They say something better 
will take its place. I do not believe it. I do not be- 
lieve anything better is, or ever was, or can be. It 
has lost its force with this generation in a measure, 
though not altogether. The transition stage from 
an old to a new industrial life has partially destroyed 
that, as it has destroyed many other sweet flowers, 
which will, however, spring afresh to bloom anew 
among the beauties of the new order of things, fertil- 
ized by the ashes of the old. But I believe our people 
will recur to it, simply because it will be, in the new 
life, the survival of the fittest out of the old. 

It has been said that "an honest man is the noblest 
work of God." It is a half truth. There is some- 
thing nobler than the merely honest man, because 
inclusive of it. It is an honest man who adds to his 
honesty, courtesy, unassuming courage, charity, 
purity, unselfishness of thought and conduct, devotion 
of self and class to his people's ideal; in a word, a 
gentleman. This is the ideal in the homestead yet, 
though in the mart it has been overgrown with the 
weeds of money-getting. Above all, it is safely 
ensconced in the hearts of good women, whence it 
will come, as things enshrined there must come, in 
their children's lives to enrich all society. Call it 
what you will, Mr. Speaker, God grant that we as a 
people may never be without it. In the meantime the 
scythe of death has been busy with Mississippians — 



50 Oratory of the South 

Davis, Lamar, George, Walthall — all gone! What 
wonder if we are tempted to exclaim — 

"Oh, my country's wintry state ! 
What second spring shall renovate, 
What genial sun shall bid arise, 
The buried warlike and the wise?" 



THE YOUNG LAWYER 

F. CHARLES HUME, JR. 

Of the Houston (Tex.) Bar 

[Condensed from a speech delivered at the annual ban- 
quet of the American Bar Association held in Minneapolis, 
Minn., August 31, 1906; described by the Minneapolis 
Journal as a "post-prandial triumph."] 

Mr. Toastmaster, Fellow-Practitioners } and Young 

Lawyers : 

From the lawyers of Texas I come — unarmed — 
bringing to you the message of civilization. Without 
hope of reward, and without fear of recognition, I 
have come to lend the charm of high professional 
character, and impart tone, to this meeting. It is not 
to me, however, that your thanks are due for my 
presence here. It was my brethren of the bar that 
sent me on this mission, conscious of its perils. I will 
not shield them. It was they that did command and 
hasten my departure hither, with the classic Spartan 
adjuration, — Go : come back with your nerve or 
on it! 

Gentlemen, I am a modest man, as all men are 
that say they are. And my chief characteristic, aside 
from physical pulchritude, is candor; that is, I am 
a blunt man, even to the point of dullness. Yet I 
clearly perceive that there is a solemn duty devolving 
upon those of us that have attained the heights, to 



F. Charles Hume, Jr. 51 

cast benign glances upon the young lawyers strug- 
gling in the valley below. For at last the young 
lawyer is the hope of the profession, just as he is the 
despair of the trial judge. 

The young lawyer exults in logic and analysis — he 
defies both. Let us contemplate him. He may be 
described as the genus homo importans — "deep on 
whose front engraven, deliberation sits and public 
care." He is res tota — in the modern tongue, "the 
whole works." He is great in persona, rather than 
in rem or in rebus. According to experienced trial 
judges, the "young lawyer" is a contradiction in 
terms; yet a necessary evil, whose chief function is 
to grow older. Like the Law, he is a process, not a 
completed product — university diplomas notwith- 
standing. In judicial opinion he is obiter dictum. 
Among lawyers, he is sui generis — a sort of differ- 
ence without a distinction. The jurists appear to con- 
cede that he exists by presumption of law; and the 
weight of authority seems to be that he thrives by 
presumption in fact. He can scarcely be said to come 
within the purview of the laity: his name loometh 
large on his own sign; to the public it shineth as 
from afar — and very faintly. He is not expressly 
classified among the public utilities, but he no doubt 
has his place — the difficulty is to find it. His sphere 
is coextensive with that ascribed by Lord Brougham 
to the Law of England : to get twelve men in a 
"box" — and jam down the lid. 

The lawyer should know everything — the young 
lawyer does. Solomon could not have matched him. 
And "the memory of man runneth not to the con- 
trary" — of his. If the old lawyer knows most, the 
young lawyer knows best. It is no trouble for him to 
tell what the law is — it is rather a surprise. But the 
evil day cometh apace, when with "assurance doubly 
sure" and stride triumphant, he marches into court 



52 Oratory of the South 

with his first case ; and, enveloped in the darkness of 
his own pleadings, he falls into the clutches of the 
grisly old guerrilla, General Demurrer. Let us not 
paint the pathetic picture, nor voice the lamentation. 

The young lawyer is gregarious — he cometh in 
flocks. But tremble not, my friends, at the annual 
increase of competitors; for though many young 
lawyers are called, few deliver the "merchandise." 
To the established practitioner the situation is not 
hopeless, but has its compensations. Let us be just; 
for we know that the young lawyer is a valuable 
litigious asset. And furthermore, whether we agree 
that the law is an exact science, we know that it hath 
a sort of certainty that often amounts to fatality; 
and that, while its policy is to put an end to litigation, 
its practice puts an end to many young lawyers — thus 
establishing in the profession a subtle relation of equi- 
librium between genesis and exodus. Also let us be 
generous. And when the young lawyer feels that his 
place is precarious, and that his talents are not ap- 
preciated, and that everything is against him, let us 
exhort him to brace up, take courage and be firm; 
for conditions will change, and probably get — worse. 
And my dear young friends, let me admonish you, in 
the melancholy hour and whatever may betide, — to 
think always of the nobility and dignity of your pro- 
fession. Keep well in your own mind the fact that 
you are a lawyer; and some day perhaps the com- 
munity will discover your secret. 

Esteem the Law, thy mistress: guardian angel of 
blind justice, and, by men's unthought appointment 
through the ages, her majestic voice and dread inter- 
preter. She sits aloft upon the rock-ribbed Mount 
of Right, a peaceful virgin, frowning chaos and dis- 
order down throughout the world. To stay the hand 
of reckless might and turbulence, she reacheth forth; 
and higher yet to lift the blood-won standard of long- 



F. Charles Hume, Jr. 53 

wak'ning man's humanity to man. From us she's 
hid, betimes, in mist; and from her dim retreat 'tis 
sport to watch us climb, and stumble, fall, and then 
again essay the height. There leads no path of dal- 
liance to her bower ; to her favor, winds the stubborn 
royal road of honor, courage, and devotion. With 
the largess of content that on the faithful she bestows, 
nor gold, nor regal purple, nor the "wealth of Ind," 
nor argosy with precious stones deep laden, — e'en 
can vie; all these are but the greedy gew-gaws of a 
life misused, against the tranquil balm that awaits the 
seal of her approval. 

Develop generous impulses. It is to my keen sense 
of gratitude that I chiefly owe my present business 
relations. When the world was apprised through the 
associated press that I had procured license to prac- 
tice law, the clamorous demand usually made for the 
services of the young lawyer by interests in the large 
cities was directed toward me. But my father, who 
had sent me to school, I felt had some claims upon 
me. So I took no account of any of the inducements 
offered me. I went to my father and said : "You have 
educated me — at least you think you have. I am 
grateful. You have an established practice. You 
need me." He replied, "You are very thoughtful 
and considerate." And I proved it by taking him — 
into partnership. And I advise every young lawyer 
similarly situated to follow my example, especially 
if he has any reverence for the three graces, — food, 
shelter, and raiment. Censure me not for paternal- 
ism. Each to his own ; but, verily, my young friends, 
to depend on our fathers is silver ; to depend on our- 
selves is "brass." And lest you have cause to lament 
your client, I charge you fling away self-reliance, "for 
by that sin fell the angels." 

You will no doubt make mistakes. The man that 
never makes mistakes never makes anything. And 



54 Oratory of the South 

to the man of indomitable will nothing succeeds like 
failure. "Upon our dead selves as stepping stones 
we rise to higher things." I have traveled the road 
myself. I want to see you successful. You have my 
best wishes ever. In your adversity my heart goes 
out to you ; in your prosperity — my hand. 

In conclusion — be your success, as men call it, what 
it may, bear in mind that change is the law of life. 
The watchword of progress is "move on"; and fixa- 
tion is retrogression. And in this regard, doth justice 
ever grant fair and ample dispensation to her ser- 
vitors of the law. Mindful of your solace, she hath 
wisely provided. And when the city's "thick-com- 
ing" complications, and garish flare and turmoil, 
shall have palled upon you, and you have overtaxed 
your "credulity in listening to the whispers of fancy" ; 
and have pursued with vain "eagerness the phantoms 
of hope," you may still answer the plaintive call of 
the bucolic siren for her own — and take to the tall 
timber ! And, my dear young friends, as a prophet 
without honor in his own, or any other country, let 
me predict that I shall precede you there ; and be the 
first to bid you welcome, in copious draughts of ob- 
scurity, back to nature and the simple life. 



THE MAJESTY OF LAW 

CHARLTON H. ALEXANDER 

Of the Jackson (Miss.) Bar 

[Extract from an address delivered before the Univer- 
sity of Mississippi, June 5, 1900.] 

From a finite view-point the secret of the mighty 
power of the Anglo-Saxon lies in the enthronement of 
law — law which founds on the moral sense of the 
citizen, and protects that citizen, whoever he may be; 



Charlton H. Alexander 55 

law which guards the home as the unit of society and 
exalts the citizen as the unit of national life; law 
which follows that unit with its protection even to the 
remotest confines of the earth. 

Sirs, it means something to be an American citizen ! 
If it does not mean that the humblest citizen shall 
have the protection of the best laws of the best gov- 
ernment on earth, then we should cease our boast- 
ing. Faded is the glory and dimmed the majesty of 
law, when it no longer protects a citizen in his legal 
rights and his legal remedies, whoever and wherever 
he may be — whether he be a millionaire whose 
property is threatened by a riot of organized labor, 
or the poorest tenant in the purlieus of poverty, from 
whom organized greed would snatch the ice that 
cools his fevered brow; whether he be the faithful 
missionary whose possessions are plundered by the 
cruel Turk, or the obscure sailor unlawfully seized in 
the streets of Valparaiso; whether it be a negro 
laborer shot down by riotous whites in a Northern 
State for the crime of trying to work, or an idle and 
vicious negro who, for a real crime, is lynched by a 
Southern mob. 

There is a pestilential evil which is settling like a 
blight on our land. It is a spirit of lawlessness — 
either open defiance of law or a lack of reverence for 
its majesty. It may be the lawless strike, which be- 
gins, perhaps, in just resentment of corporate oppres- 
sion, but ends in wanton destruction of life or prop- 
erty. It may be political degradation which makes 
commerce of ballots, and drives voters like cattle into 
political shambles. It may be a defiant plutocracy, 
which seduces with cunning or with gold the law- 
making or law-enforcing power. It may be the 
frantic surging of the proletariat in our great cities 
against the barriers of government and society, or a 
discordant communism which seeks license in the 



56 Oratory of the South 

name of liberty. Whatever may be the evil else- 
where, the predominant danger to the South lies in a 
lack of reverence for law — a too quick appeal to per- 
sonal violence in every form. 

Passing by causes, what of the cure? First of all, 
exalt the ballot. Every vote should be the free 
choice, and express the moral sentiment, of an intelli- 
gent citizen. Your ballot, young gentlemen, makes 
you partners in your government. It lifts you to 
the plane of real royalty. It makes the laws your 
laws. Your ballot is not only a privilege, it is a 
pledge. In party elections the voter is deemed 
to have pledged his support to the men or the 
measures chosen. You owe your country greater al- 
legiance than you owe your party. And you should 
hold your every vote as a solemn pledge to obey and 
uphold the law of the land. Guard, then, the ballot 
box. Guard it as the symbol of your sovereignty. 
Guard it even "as the Parsee watches the sacred 
flame." Guard it, even as the lion of Thorswalden 
guards the lilies of France. 

But we must do more. We must remove all ac- 
cursed things from the camp. We must banish the 
pistol. It has fostered among us a spurious chiv- 
alry — a hip-pocket chivalry, if you please. The 
habit of carrying weapons has a barbarous origin. 
Our Teuton forefather, who went from battle to the 
councils of his people, carried his weapons with him. 
He voted by brandishing his spear, and applauded 
with the clangor of his arms. Right here some may 
find the germ of a modern legislature. But certain it 
is that neither that remote ancestor, nor those less re- 
mote, who wore their swords full displayed as a 
badge of their gentility, nor those who wrote into our 
Constitution that the people should have the right to 
carry arms in self-defense, ever dreamed of private 
broils and hair-trigger pistols. What is a pistol? 



Charlton H. Alexander 57 

For what is it made? Useless to the law-abiding for 
defense, unsuited for war, unfitted for game, its real, 
its only target is a human heart. The man who car- 
ries a pistol concealed is a willing violator of the law. 
He deliberately insults its majesty. The dynamite 
bomb is not more distinctively the symbol of anarchy 
than the pistol is the symbol of lawless violence in 
the South. Yet even in the toys of childhood our 
people are made familiar with this exponent of their 
country's great shame. Yes, banish the pistol. Our 
State, our Southland, will not have made a fair begin- 
ning in the suppression of lawlessness until a purified 
public sentiment thrusts aside as an outlaw the man 
who feels that his toilet is not complete until he has 
buckled around him a weapon designed alone for 
taking human life. 

Again, the dignity of law cannot be preserved, or 
its supremacy maintained, unless every statute be 
enforced. He who wilfully violates a law, or con- 
nives at its being broken, not only weakens his own 
self-respect as a citizen, but directly affronts the 
majesty of the law. No man should dare to be 
wiser than the law. The will of no man should 
prevail against the combined will of all. Neither 
partisan zeal, nor doubt as to the policy of a law, 
should tempt to its disobedience. If the rights of a 
citizen, however humble, are to be protected at any 
cost, the sovereign power should not stop at any cost 
in punishing any infraction of law. When the wis- 
dom of our lawmakers shall have devised a speedy, 
sure, and adequate remedy for punishing those crimes 
which excite to violence, a long step will have been 
taken in this needed reform. 

I pass now to the final and most effectual remedy. 
It is in the proper education of our people. The 
young must be educated, not only to be scholars, but 
citizens. This University, founded and maintained 



58 Oratory of the South 

by the State, should be foremost in every movement 
looking to the elevation of citizenship. Surely those 
whom the State has trained should lead in the service 
of the State. Even in youth the citizen should be 
taught to reverence the law and the courts. We can- 
not dissociate law from the courts which administer 
it. It will be the first step of our country's down- 
fall when party zeal or official corruption finds per- 
manent place in our courts of last resort. Every 
Mississippian should be proud of the record of her 
judiciary. There was a time when shame and dis- 
honor reared their crests unabashed in the chair of 
the executive; when a Barca brood of political rob- 
bers invaded our legislative halls and preyed with 
diabolical greed and cunning upon the ignorance of 
the blacks and the helplessness of the prostrate 
whites; when, opposed to these, were less than a 
score of sturdy patriots, who, undaunted by difficul- 
ties, and undismayed by dangers, by their courage 
and sagacity saved the ship of state from total wreck; 
and when, at last, that ship, sailing between the 
Scylla of ignorance and the Charybdis of corruption, 
rode triumphant through the surging waves there 
loomed up against the blackness of the storm a noble 
pilot, standing, like Palinurus, at the wheel. It was 
the towering form of John M. Stone. The mention 
of his name is a eulogy on Mississippi. 

Yet further. There is one tribunal that challenges 
the admiration, as it should the reverence, of every 
American citizen. The framers of our government, 
when they made the Constitution, committed it into 
the keeping of the Supreme Court of the United 
States. Well has it guarded the trust. The Presi- 
dent may be a partisan. The Congress is always 
partisan. But that tribunal has ever sat in serene 
majesty above the fierce surging of party strife, above 
the pollution of official corruption. It has guarded 



Charlton H. Alexander 59 

our sacred bill of rights — rights of the people, and 
rights of the States — against the stealthy encroach 
ments of selfish cunning and the open assaults of tur- 
bulent faction. If there be any man in all the Union 
who should cherish reverence and gratitude for that 
tribunal it is the Southern man — the Southern States' 
rights Democrat, if you please. It stood between us 
and ruin in the time of our supreme peril. Not once, 
nor twice, but many times it averted the blow which 
sectional hatred or misguided bigotry aimed at our 
people. It was that court which, when Congress 
sought to establish Federal control over State elec- 
tions, confined that control exclusively in the States. 
It was that court which nullified the proclamation of 
Lincoln, ordering trial by court martial instead of a 
jury, of aiders and abettors of the Southern cause 
outside the circle of actual hostilities. It was that 
court whose judgment wrested from the nation itself 
and restored to the family of Robert E. Lee its an- 
cestral home. It was that court which held void 
that iniquitous oath by which the best and most 
patriotic citizens of the South were barred from place 
and power unless they would abjure the past and 
deny even all thought of disloyalty. It was that 
court which permitted the able Confederate lawyer 
and statesman, A. H. Garland, to practice before its 
bar, despite his refusal to take that hated oath. And 
when Congress found a culmination for all the shame 
and humiliation it would heap upon the whites of 
the South, and sought to force upon them social 
equality with the blacks, it was that court which 
struck the civil rights bill lifeless at its feet, and thus 
preserved to the States the right to enact into posi- 
tive statute a law written on the heart of the Anglo- 
Saxon wherever he walks the earth. It was that 
court which afterwards affirmed the right of Missis- 
sippi to separate the races on the highways of travel, 



60 Oratory of the South 

and also her right, by a limitation of suffrage, to 
exclude ignorance from the polls, and thus to per- 
petuate the rule of intelligence, which means white 
supremacy. These examples might yet be multiplied. 
In every instance the court was overwhelmingly Re- 
publican. Away, then, with the thought that our 
highest tribunal has ever yet prostrated itself at the 
feet of party. It has justified the wisdom of our 
fathers, and is yet worthy of our reverence. 

Finally, remember that it is only as the citizen is 
exalted that the majesty of the law is preserved. 
The divine Law-Giver said to His followers, "The 
kingdom of heaven is within you," and a wise man 
added, speaking to Englishmen, "The kingdom of 
England is within you." Much more is it true that 
the Republic is within the citizen. I see in every 
man before me a sovereign and a subject — a sover- 
eign, in that it is his high prerogative to make laws; 
a subject, in that it is his crowning virtue to obey 
them. There is a craving in the human heart for 
objects that will endure. Even as we build we seek 
material which under the corroding touch of time will 
not decay. To the patriotic heart the question often 
recurs, Are our liberties safe? Is our Republic to 
endure? I know not. But this I know, that no 
government can endure forever that does not rest on 
the granite foundations of immutable law. Let us 
of the South resolve that the reign of prosperity 
which is to be our portion shall be a reign of law. 
And let us hope that through yet uncounted years, 
even from the remotest nations of the earth whom 
our laws shall bless, those shall come who will look 
upon the beautiful and enduring temple of liberty 
which our fathers have reared, and will say, as did 
that one who looked upon the majestic dome and 
foundations of St. Paul, 

"They dreamt not of a perishable home, who thus could 
build." 



Selden P. Spencer 61 

LAWYERS AND LAWLESSNESS 

SELDEN P. SPENCER 

[Extract from an address delivered at the joint meeting 
of the Bar Association, of Arkansas and Texas, at Texar- 
kana, Arkansas — Texas, July n, 1906.] 

There is a lawlessness of evasion as well as of vio- 
lation, a lawlessness that seeks and too often secures 
the sanction of the lawyer — that is the burden of my 
theme. 

In this day the disregard of law most dangerous 
in these United States is not the crime of the brutal 
criminal who robs or murders or burns; for watch- 
ing him with constant vigilance are the officers of 
the law empowered to arrest at once on the commis- 
sion of the crime, and, moreover, the evidences of his 
criminal act are so open and the evil effect upon the 
community so immediate that from the moment of 
the wrongful act, if indeed not before, the criminal 
himself becomes an outcast, hiding and hunted. 
Concerning this class of crimes in general, confined as 
they are to the ignorant and the degenerate — to those 
who are without either moral, social, or financial 
responsibility — I have at this time nothing to say. 

The lawlessness — none the less dangerous — to 
which I direct your attention is that disregard of law 
on the part, perhaps, of those who are of gentle 
birth ; who have had the advantage of a liberal edu- 
cation; whose fortunes have been accumulated and 
are preserved by virtue of the^power of the very law 
which they despise; of those who with righteous in- 
dignation would proceed, as to a public duty, against 
the common thief or thug who may have deprived 
them of their money or trespassed upon their persons 
or property. 

There is a treachery in the time of war, and the 



62 Oratory of the South 

guilty traitor is promptly hanged. There is as well 
a traitor in the time of peace: he it is who by his 
speech or counsel or conduct debauches the law of 
the land. Such lawlessness has not the excuse of 
ignorance; it is conceived in selfishness and greed, 
and is too often brought forth with legal midwifery, 
and is possible only because of and where exists a 
low regard for the dignity and power of the law on 
the part of those who are either the immediate trans- 
gressors, or on the part of those who, mainly of our 
profession, by counsel and assistance, abet the crime. 
The lawlessness of evasion exalts gold above charac- 
ter, and is more concerned about the amount of gain 
than with the manner of its getting. It regards law 
not with respect, but rather as the burglar views the 
lock that separates him from his loot, or locates 
the watchman that awaits his egress — as something 
to be avoided or overcome. 

Strange as it may seem, this lawlessness of greed 
believes in the strict enforcement of the law against 
the unfortunate or the victim of evil association, and 
protests violently against leniency in such cases in 
either prosecution or pardon; but when the law 
comes in conflict with the lust of gold or is invoked 
for the protection of the people, either to prevent 
restraint of trade or to restrict monopoly in regard 
to articles generally used, or to prohibit discrimina- 
tion in favor of the rich and powerful and against 
the weak, or to enforce the assessment and payment 
of taxes, in an instant the law thus evoked has lost 
its majesty and is alleged to have become at once an 
instrument of oppression to be resisted or evaded by 
every means which money, friendship, brains, or tech- 
nicality can suggest. 

In this land of ours, where every citizen — as the 
Supreme Court of the United States has put it — is a 
constituent part of the sovereignty itself, the man 



Selden P. Spencer 6 3 

who earns his living with his hands has the right to 
expect and to demand that every corporation engaged 
in quasi-public business shall, for example, transport 
people or freight, or accept employment from all who 
desire it, at the same price and on the same terms for 
one as for the other; and that merely because a ship- 
per or trader may be rich or powerful is no reason 
why he should be allowed reduced rates which are 
not as well open and known to every one who has 
need of this public service; arid the right to thus 
expect and demand is in principle as firmly and 
righteously established as is the right of him who has 
acquired a fortune to expect and demand that it be 
preserved from theft or trespass. 

Laws preventing discrimination in freight and 
passenger rates that apply to railroads ; laws concern- 
ing mercantile and manufacturing companies that 
restrict dangerous combinations or prohibit unfair 
monopolies, or regulate the payment of capital stock 
or the operation of the business of the company; laws 
that provide when and how arrests may be made or 
property seized; laws that prohibit false testimony 
or collusion either to secure licenses or to obtain de- 
crees or to evade taxation, and that thus give force to 
the oath which binds the taker not only to tell the 
truth, but to tell the whole truth and nothing but 
the truth, — are all laws clad with the same majesty, 
deserving of the same respect, entitled to the same 
enforcement as are the laws upon the statute books 
concerning murder or rape or arson. The difference 
is one of degree, not of principle ; both merely because 
they are laws, if for no other reason, have a right 
to respect and enforcement. 

My brothers of the bar, ours is an exalted pro- 
fession; next to that vocation which has to do with 
the eternal welfare of mankind and which brings 
"good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the 



64 Oratory of the South 

people," is to be ranked the calling to which we have 
devoted our lives, and that has to do with the life 
and liberty as well as with the property of mankind. 

Those great words of Thomas Hooker are true 
to-day: "Of Law there can be no less acknowledged 
than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice is 
the harmony of the world. All things in heaven 
and earth do her homage, — the very least as feeling 
her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her 
power." 

The lawyer of to-day, the true lawyer, true to the 
history of his profession, to its high purpose and its 
noble aim, is the man, found no more often in the 
towns and country than in the city, who counsels and 
pleads for what is right, not for what is only ex- 
pedient or desired; who can always be found ready 
to assist in the preventing or remedying of wrong, 
never in the accomplishing of it; who regards his 
duty to God, to his country, to his profession, as 
above purchase; who acts for his clients' rights, not 
as their hired slave; in whom character, above even 
learning or genius or eloquence, is the great balancing 
power of his life. 

The profession that has come down to us is laden 
with its trophies of rights maintained, wrongs over- 
thrown, liberties secured and preserved, innocence 
established, guilt punished, and it can in our day have 
no greater glory than to uphold and maintain the law 
of the land; and refusing to counsel or assist in its 
evasion or violation, thus establish by practice and 
counsel as well as by precept among the people that 
general respect for the law, which in a government 
like ours, of the people, and by the people, as well 
as for the people, is absolutely essential. 



James Stephen Hogg 65 

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT 

JAMES STEPHEN HOGG 

Ex-Governor of Texas 

[A speech delivered at a banquet in honor of President 
Roosevelt at Dallas, Tex., April 5, 1905.] 

My fellow-citizens, I came here, several hundred 
miles, after a protracted, serious sickness, in order 
to testify my appreciation of the man who, in one 
night's time, according to accredited reports, liber- 
ated Texas from commercial tyranny; a man who, 
in a night's time, made it possible for our commerce, 
so great, so wonderful, and of such boundless pos- 
sibilities, to reach a market of three hundred million 
people without traveling nine thousand miles out of 
the way; a man who, in a night's time, brought, 
without resort to diplomacy, without the complica- 
tions of red-tapeism, what the American people for 
over one hundred years have been trying to get — the 
great Panama canal. Yes, it is a pleasure to me as 
a Texan rising above partisan prejudice, to come here 
to meet the great President who had the manhood to 
strike back the dough-faced pirates who have fettered 
commerce for over one hundred years. That's 
Americanism, not politics. That's a principle which 
every American, proud of his country, must yield 
with pride. Mr. President, we appreciate you, sir, 
and that's the real cause of this demonstration to-day. 

I came to pay my respects to him for other reasons. 
He is the first President to obey the will and senti- 
ment of the American people, — absolutely, fearlessly, 
regardless of his own environments. An instance in 
point is his taking the first step to strike down the 
Northern Securities Company. He was the first one 
to lead out to suppress the trusts of this country that 
are now throttling commerce and destroying indi- 



66 Oratory of the South 

vidualism. He was the first one to scourge back 
from high places the partisans of his lifetime (around 
him as his friends), the corruptionists in high places. 
If the spirit of Andrew Jackson has descended to find 
place again in the bosom of any man in the last seventy 
years, it is in Theodore Roosevelt. And I am proud 
that there is a spirit of harmony to-day among the 
people of this State in extending a warm, a hearty 
welcome to the man of destiny, the man of San Juan 
Hill, the man who put a stop to the Northern Securi- 
ties Company corruption, the friend of the people 
against combinations everywhere. And when Texans 
stand up to welcome the great Democratic President, 
we are proud to have the Republicans to help us. 

And I must say that, if you will read American 
history, if you will read the biographies of the men 
who have occupied the White House, you will find 
that this is the first man who has studied his own 
country. He has been upon the plains, under the 
blanket, to study the dry regions of the great West, 
to see the necessity for irrigation. Did you ever 
know a man who was raised upon the plains, or who 
had spent his young manhood there in the saddle, that 
was not opposed to monopoly in every form? He is 
for the greatest individual freedom consistent with 
human rights in obedience to the Constitution of the 
country. And when the senators from the South- 
land opposed him, they committed the political blun- 
der of the nineteenth century. Men in high places, 
catering to what they believed to be a common prej- 
udice among the people, sought to embitter the coun- 
try against him. 

Mr. President, we want to say to you, sir, that 
this demonstration, and those yet to follow, will pro- 
claim to the world that Texas has not tried to snub 
you ! The spirit of liberality in the bosoms of these 
men here, who are the representatives of every class 



Alexander W. Terrell 67 

of people in our State, is as broad as the ocean's sweep 
or the tidal wave's measureless motion, always imbued 
with justice, ever ready to do honor to a servant of 
the people who will obey their will. 



TRIBUTE TO JAMES S. HOGG 

ALEXANDER W. TERRELL 

Of the Austin (Tex.) Bar; United States Minister to 
Turkey during the administration of President Cleveland 

[Extract from an address before the Texas Legislature, 
March 29, 1906.] 

Mr. Speaker and Gentlemen of the House: 

Others who have addressed you have paid a just 
tribute to the memory of Governor James S. Hogg 
as a statesman. I choose rather to speak of him as 
a man, for his achievements are a part of our public 
history. 

Through long years of intimate friendship and 
association I learned to know him well as an incor- 
ruptible patriot and as a pure-souled gentleman. He 
was a child of Texas to the manner born. I knew 
his father, General Hogg, who was a pioneer of the 
Republic of Texas, and who helped to frame her 
first State Constitution. He died at Shiloh as a 
Brigadier General of the Confederacy, and, like most 
true men who devote their lives to the service of the 
state, he died poor. In less than twelve months the 
wife of this stanch patriot followed her husband into 
the great unknown. And so James S. Hogg, born of 
patrician parents, was left an orphan boy. 

Pause one moment and think of that poor boy as 
he stood over yonder amid the pine hills of east 
Texas, alone in the world, and while war was deso- 
lating the South; no parents, no money, no home, 



68 Oratory of the South 

with nothing to encourage his hopes as he stood and 
listened to the winds moaning through the tall pines 
above him. Was there no help for the widow's son? 
Yes, the help was within him, for he was a brave 
man's son and had a fearless soul. 

Turn now another leaf in the history of this or- 
phan boy and see him selling newspapers on the streets 
of Tyler — with Horace Chilton, whom he appointed 
years afterwards to a seat in the United States Sen- 
ate. Before he was twenty-two years old he was 
publishing from a hand press a little town paper of 
his own. While he was still a printer, a young me- 
chanic was with him listening to the argument of a 
lawyer, when he said: "If we had studied law we 
could make as good a speech as that." They both 
began at once the study of law, but it was slow work, 
for they had to toil for bread and raiment, and it 
was four years before Hogg obtained his license. 

Turn another leaf. As a lawyer he realized that 
a freeman should bow only before the majesty of 
the law, and that he should be always ready to en- 
force its authority; for the law is our only king. 
One day two desperadoes armed with pistols had 
terrorized the officers of the law and were riding 
their horses into the stores. Young Hogg and a 
friend knocked them down, disarmed them, and put 
them in jail. Soon afterwards he was waylaid and 
shot down, but he recovered and bore the deep wound 
to his grave. He was wounded again, and more 
than once, but in each case it was while he was de- 
fending the majesty of the law. 

His moral courage was sublime, for he dared to 
do whatever he thought was right, never counting 
either the odds or the cost. At the Democratic State 
convention in Waco, you remember an angry mob of 
a thousand delegates refused with shouts and execra- 
tions to hear him speak. He stood calm and fearless 



Alexander W. Terrell 69 

through the storm until he awed them into silence; 
they then listened, approved and adopted the very 
resolutions they had at first opposed. History gives 
no other record of such a triumph. 

Governor Hogg was a consistent Christian. If 
he was not found as often as other men among church 
worshipers, what of that? He had read how the 
Master in his Sermon on the Mount warned his fol- 
lowers not to be like those who loved to pray stand- 
ing in the synagogues and on the street corners, to be 
seen of men. His was not the hard, repulsive faith 
of Jerome and Augustine, who worshiped a God of 
vengeance. He adored a God of love. He saw in 
all nature — in its harmonies, its flowers, its birds of 
song, and its beauty — a God of love who took no 
delight in the punishment of His children. Though 
he believed that some just penalty should follow 
violated law, he trusted to an atoning sacrifice and 
to the love of a merciful God. 

He is gone from amongst us to that mysterious 
rest toward which we all hasten. No more will we 
look on that manly, genial face on which there was 
no line of cunning or duplicity. The warm grasp of 
his hand will be felt no more, nor will his clear blue 
eyes beam again in sympathy for us. We have laid 
away tenderly and with loving hands the shell in 
which the deathless soul once lingered, and placed it 
beside that of his gentle wife. No cold marble will 
press on his coffined clay, but nature, with each re- 
turning spring, will spread her mantle of green over 
his breast and bedeck it with wild flowers. The trees 
that he loved will wave their lofty branches above 
his tomb, "to rock the high nest, and take both the 
bird and the breeze to their breast." In the years 
to come the youth of Texas will visit that tomb as 
a hallowed shrine, and, there renewing their fidelity 
to a government by the people, will be inspired with 



70 Oratory of the South 

new hope and courage. The mocking-bird once 
cheered the heart of the orphan boy in its desolation ; 
it will come again, and on the topmost bough that 
will wave above his tomb, it will swing and sing a 
clear, sweet, triumphant requiem for the repose of the 
great tribune of the people. 



TRIBUTE TO PRESIDENT McKINLEY 

MONROE M'CLURG 

Ex-Attorney General of Mississippi 

[Extract from an address delivered at Jackson, Miss., 
September, 1901.] 

President McKinley came of a sturdy Scotch an- 
cestry and possessed the incomparable heritage of 
being a native, free-born, Anglo-Saxon American 
citizen. By birth he was neither a patrician nor a 
peasant, but the offspring of a plain, honest stock that 
filled his veins with the best blood of both classes 
and his heart with all of the sympathies, all of the 
hopes, and all of the aspirations of the great heart 
of his country. His life had been a training school 
for the presidency: a teacher, a post office clerk, a 
soldier, a politician, a Congressman fourteen years, 
and two terms Governor of his native State. 

In peace and in war, under all circumstances, he 
deported himself as became the chief executive of a 
free and independent people. The gold standard, 
the highest tariff, the freedom of Cuba, the subjuga- 
tion and purchase of the Philippines, industrial com- 
binations, the softening of sectional hatred, the 
surprising exhibition of American courage, valor, and 
power in the army and navy, especially the history of 
Manila Bay, San Juan, and Santiago, and the adjust- 
ment of international complications in China, — will 



, Monroe McClurg 71 

all be closely associated with his name as President of 
the United States. 

And yet higher still — supremely higher than party 
politics and enforced national glory — McKinley as a 
President in his private and domestic life was a living 
lesson to all Christian civilization. His daily walk 
and conversation was a living lesson constantly exem- 
plifying the real strength of the national character — 
the purity of individual conscience, the strength of 
personal will, the reverence of Divine power. As a 
President of eighty millions of free people he 
measured up to the most exalted standard for him 
who fills that office. He loved and served all sec- 
tions and all classes, and was an exemplar worthy of 
all imitation. He lived and died a manly man. 

We are told that when Montesquieu came to die 
his spiritual adviser said to him, "No man, better 
than you, sir, can realize the greatness of God." 
"No one," he replied, "knows better the littleness of 
man." 

So it was with our President. Passing into that 
artificial sleep that robs the surgeon's knife of pain, 
the last whisper caught from his lips by the attend- 
ing men of science was, "Thy kingdom come. Thy 
will be done on earth as it is in heaven." In his de- 
lirium he murmured, "Nearer, my God, to Thee," 
and when the final summons came he said, "Good-by, 
all, good-by. It's God's way. His will be done." 
Then he took his chamber in the silent halls of death. 

"Not, like the quarry-slave at night, 
Scourged to his dungeon, but. sustained and soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, he approaches his grave 
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams." 



72 Oratory of the South » 

UPON THE DEATH OF WILLIAM 
McKINLEY 

MARCELLUS L. DAVIS 

Of the Dardanelle (Ark.) Bar 

^ [Condensed from an address delivered at a memorial ser- 
vice held at Dardanelle, Ark., upon the occasion of the 
President's funeral.] 

The assassination of President McKinley, a strong 
man, in the very prime and vigor of the most exalted 
position of public usefulness possible to the human 
race, resting upon the very summit of American 
honor, in the full of enjoyment of the profound re- 
spect of universal civilization, upon a mission of per- 
fect peace, and standing, as it seemed to all, solid 
and secure upon the devotion, the love, and the loyalty 
of a great and mighty people, and in the very midst 
of a multitude of friends, — why he should be so 
stricken down, at such a time; why such a man, at 
such an hour and at such ignoble hands should fall, 
is to me a thing so monstrous, so incomprehensible, 
a question so utterly beyond the compass of any con- 
ception of either mine or yours, that I believe that 
no finite mind can even imagine why it should have 
happened so. And it was a question, too, that 
seemed to have puzzled much the troubled brain of 
the suffering President during the last hours of his 
life, if not to its very end. For to a heart so free 
from malice as his, to a nature so gentle, so knightly, 
and so noble, to a mind so lofty and so pure, a char- 
acter so clean, so chaste and kind, and so filled with 
charity to all his race, it must have seemed incredible 
that any creature in human form or otherwise should 
seek to take his life. We might moralize, theorize, 
or philosophize upon the causes, remote or near, that 
could produce conditions to render such a tragedy 



Marcellus L. Davis 73 

possible; but after all, perhaps, it is well enough, at 
least for the present, to leave this great question and 
its answer just where he left it, who was its victim — 
for among the last, if not the very last, words that 
he uttered as he died was the simple single sentence 
that solved it all: "It was God's way." That 
settled it as it settles all great questions, especially 
the supreme question, as to how or why or when a 
man shall die. It was the answer of a Christian, 
a philosopher, a brave man, who could "calmly lay 
his burdens down, and seek his rest, with all his coun- 
try's honors blest." 

Concerning the assassin, here is no place to speak 
of that. The personal mention of a monster of 
malice, a fiend so foul, so cruel and so cowardly 
should never mar a presence so sacred and so holy 
as this. We may safely leave the fate of this moral 
deformity to the future. Our brethren of the North 
will deal with him according to the laws of the land. 
They are cooler under crises, more dispassionate, 
more long-suffering and patient than we of the hot- 
blooded South, and equally just in the end. But one 
opinion I will venture to assert — an humble one of 
my own, 'tis true, and, for aught I know, hitherto 
wholly unexpressed, and that is : Had this thing been 
done on Southern soil, had a deed so dastardly, a 
crime so cruel, so cowardly and so causeless been 
committed in a crowd of Southern men like the mighty 
multitude where this thing happened, aye, even in 
the intensely Southern State of Arkansas, not all the 
cordons of all the police of alLthe municipalities of 
the combined Commonwealth, backed by armies and 
banked with siege guns, could for one moment have 
stayed the storm of righteous wrath and just indig- 
nation that would have seized the assassin on the spot 
and ripped him limb from limb, and sent his blood- 
stained soul to judgment before the smoke had ceased 



74 Oratory of the South 

to curl from his pistol's mouth — and in less time than 
I have taken to tell it. But let that pass. It is to 
be regretted, perhaps, that we have let too many 
things pass in this government. I shall pause to 
mention only one, but it is the saddest, I think, of 
all. It is yet within the memory of living man, 
scarce more than a generation gone by, when it was 
the proudest boast of American citizenship that we 
lived in a land where the earth was absolutely free 
to all, where every man, rich or poor, or high or low, 
or weak or strong, or what not, be he President or 
pauper, could pursue his path in peace along the pub- 
lic highway, or wander through the fields or wend 
his way among the woods, or walk the crowded 
streets at will, by midday or by moonlight, whenever, 
wherever, and however he chose, and none there be 
who dare molest or make him afraid; and we used to 
smile with amusement when we'd read of the armed 
troops that thronged and tramped at the heels of 
kings, of the pampered soldiery that sentineled the 
palaces of power, and the mailed warriors and squad- 
rons of cavalry that thundered beside the chariots of 
czars and queens and princes and potentates, to guard 
their royal persons from the vengeance of the despot- 
ridden subjects of the Old World; but we can now 
no longer boast, no longer smile. We have let that 
pass. Those good old, grand old golden days have 
gone, we fear, forever. 

But to recur to the President. The little time 
allotted here will not allow even an attempt to trace 
this bright career that has just been blotted out in 
blood, nor may we sketch anew the royal path of life 
along which he never failed to tread. He wore the 
highest honors that his country could confer, and 
wore them well and worthily. He had achieved the 
most exalted station of political power in this govern- 
ment, the loftiest eminence, the very keystone of the 



Marcellus L. Davis 75 

tallest arch of American honor that ever sprung from 
the basic foundations of our Constitution. Other 
men before him had occupied that high position, had 
risen, reigned, and fallen. Other men had reached 
those towering heights and returned again to the 
walks of private life, to pass their days in peace 
among their families and friends. But not so with 
him. He came down no more. The departure of 
this spirit from this proudest pinnacle of earthly 
honor and power to realms yet higher still may be 
likened to the eagle's flight, as standing upon the 
peak of some splintered crag, lifted above the storm- 
swept summit of some lonely mountain height, he 
plumes his pinions in the sun, unfurls his mighty 
wings, then boldly launching upwards to the sky, he 
cleaves his gallant way beyond the clouds of earth. 
It was enough. "Come up higher." He hath gone. 
But in a lowly humble way, in a simple personal way, 
as a friend or father, husband, son, or brother, we 
can only weep with those who weep, and mourn with 
those who mourn, and tenderly sympathize with those 
whom his death hath personally bereft. It is all that 
we can do. We can only hope that the song birds 
that warble in springtime shall sweetly sound above 
his sleeping dust; that the sunlit leaves of summer 
shall softly whisper hope to the dull, cold ear of 
death, and that the sheeted snows of winter with love 
shall lay their pure white pall above the bosom of the 
dead, true type, fit emblem, of the record of spotless 
honor that his noble name hath borne. 



76 Oratory of the South 

EDUCATION AND PROGRESS 

BENJAMIN H. HILL 

Formerly United States Senator from Georgia 

[Extract from a speech delivered before the Alumni So- 
ciety of the University of Georgia, Athens, Ga„, July 31, 
1871.] 

In the present, far more than in any preceding age, 
ideas govern mankind. Not individuals nor societies, 
not kings nor emperors, not fleets nor armies, but 
ideas — educated intellects — using and controlling all 
these, as does the mechanic his tools, uproot dynas- 
ties, overturn established systems, subvert and reor- 
ganize governments, revolutionize social fabrics, and 
direct civilizations. True, we have the most won- 
derful physical developments — as marvelous in char- 
acter as they are rapid in multiplication. Whether 
we look to the engines of war or the arts of peace, 
to the means of destruction or the appliances for 
preservation, to the facilities for distribution or the 
sources of production and accumulation, we shall find 
nothing in the past comparable to the achievements 
of the present. But all these gigantic elements of 
physical power are but the fruits of educated minds — 
have leaped into being at the command of ideas, and 
they are under the absolute command of ideas; and 
whether they shall really promote or destroy civili- 
zations must depend altogether upon the wise or un- 
wise discretion of this omnipotent commander. 
Thought is the Hercules of this age, and his strength 
is equally a vigorous fact, whether it be employed in 
throttling the lion of power or in cleaning out the 
Augean stables of accumulated social errors. Moving 
by nations, by races, and by systems, this irresistible 
ruler — educated thought — is setting aside old and 
setting up new civilizations at will. 



Benjamin H. Hill 7 7 

It is not my purpose now to analyze the different 
civilizations which are competing in the great strug- 
gle to lead humanity, nor to select any one for 
prominent advocacy. Nor must I be understood as 
saying that that which changes always reforms, nor 
yet that every apparent triumph is a just progress. 
But this much I affirm is true : that community, that 
people, that nation — nay, that race or that system 
which, Diogenes-like, will now content itself with 
living in its own tub, asking nothing of the conquering 
powers around it except that they stand out of its 
sunshine, will soon find itself in hopeless darkness, 
the object of derision for its helplessness, and of con- 
tempt for its folly. Whether civilizations, on the 
whole, be going forward or going backward, the 
result must be the same to those who insist on stand- 
ing still — they must be overwhelmed. Because all the 
world is, therefore each portion of the world must, 
be awake and thinking — up and acting. Nor can 
we afford to waste time and strength in defense of 
theories and systems, however valued in their day, 
which have been swept down by the moving aval- 
anche of actual events. No system which has fallen 
and been destroyed in the struggles of the past will 
ever be able to rise and grapple with the increasing 
power of its conqueror in the future. We can live 
neither in nor by the defeated past, and if we would 
live in the growing, conquering future, we must fur- 
nish our strength to shape its course and our will to 
discharge its duties. The pressing question, there- 
fore, with every people is, not what they have been, 
but whether and what they shall determine to be; 
not what their fathers were, but whether and what 
their children shall be. 

God in events — mysteriously, it may be, to us — 
has made the educated men in the South, of this 
generation, the living leaders of thought for a great 



78 Oratory of the South 

and a noble people, but a people bewildered by the 
suddenness with which they have been brought to 
one of those junctures in human affairs when one 
civilization abruptly ends and another begins. I feel 
oppressed with a sense of fear that we shall not be 
equal to the unusual responsibilities this condition im- 
poses, unless we can deal frankly with these events, 
frankly with ourselves, and bravely with our very 
habits of thought. Though unjustly, even cruelly 
slain, brave survivors lie not down with the dead, but 
rise up resolved all the more to be leaders and con- 
querors with and for the living. 

No period in the history and fortunes of our State 
was ever half so critical as the present. And in this 
anxious hour — this crisis of her fate — to whom shall 
the State look with hope if not to her own educated 
sons ? On whom shall this loved University now lean 
with faith if not on her own alumni ? Who shall 
stay the coming of Philip, if Athenians abandon 
Greece? Who shall save our Rome from the clutch 
of despot and the tread of the vandal, if our An- 
tonies still madly follow the fleeing, faithless, fallen 
African? 

Gentlemen, we cannot escape the responsibility 
pressing upon us. If we prove unequal to our duties 
now, then a State, with every natural gift but worthy 
sons, appropriated by others, and a University fallen 
in the midst of her own listless, unheeding children, 
must be the measure of our shame in the future. 
But if we prove equal to those duties now, then a 
State surpassed by none in wealth, worth, and power, 
with the University made ^mortal for her crown, 
will be the glory that is waiti^^o reward our ambi- 
tion. 1 

And we shall escape this shame and win this glory 
if we now will fully comprehend and manfully act - 
upon three predicate propositions : first, that the civ- 



Benjamin H. Hill 79 

ilization peculiar to the Southern States hitherto has 
passed away, and forever; second, that no new civi- 
lization can be equal to the demands of the age which 
does not lay its foundations in the intelligence of the 
people and in the multiplication and social elevation 
of educated industries; third, that no system of edu- 
cation for the people, and for the multiplication of 
the industries, can be complete, or efficient, or avail- 
able, which does not begin with an ample, well- 
endowed, and independent university. 

These three postulates embody the triunity of all 
our hope as a people. Here the work of recovery 
must begin — and in this way alone, and by you alone, 
can it be begun. The educated men of the South, of 
this generation, must be responsible for the future 
of the South. The educated men of Georgia now 
before me must be responsible for the future of 
Georgia. That future will be anything you now 
command. From every portion of this dear old 
Commonwealth there comes this day an earnest, 
anxious voice to you, saying, Shall we command, or 
shall we serve? Shall we rise, or shall we fall yet 
lower ? Shall we live, or shall we die ? 

Gathering in my own the voices of you all, and 
with hearts resolved and purposes fixed, I send back 
the gladdening response : We shall live ! We shall 
rise ! We shall command ! We have given up the 
dusky Helen — pity we kept the harlot so long! 
True, alas! Hector is dead, and Priam is dethroned; 
and Troy, proud Troy, has glared by the torch, and 
crumbled 'neath the blows, and wept 'mid tl^e jeers of 
reveling Greeks in every household. But mbre than 
a hundred Aeneases live! On more than a hundred 
broader, deeper Tibers we will found greater^cities, 
rear richer temples, raise loftier towers, until all the 
world shall respect and fear, and even the Greeks 
shall covet, honor, and obey ! 



SO Oratory of the South 

THE USES OF A LIBRARY 

SAMUEL M. SMITH 

Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of 
Columbia, 8. C. 

[Extract from an address at the dedication of the Car- 
negie Library, Winthrop College, Rock Hill, S. C, June 
4, 1906.] 

The country of Scotland! bare and barren, harsh 
and ungracious in climate, somewhat rude and un- 
graceful in the amenities that adorn life, and yet like 
the granite of her hills and the heather of her plains, 
strong and enduring in every element of noble char- 
acter, from the largess of her unwasting abundance 
she has enriched every nation of the globe. Of her 
this proverb runs : That the aspiring eye of every 
youth within her borders can see the turrets of a uni- 
versity from the nearest hill-top ! The occasion has 
suggested this line of thought because my fancy pic- 
tures a library as in a very real though not formal 
sense something of a university, wherein great books 
are life's teachers; the faculty being in such cases 

"Those dead but sceptered sovereigns, 
Who rule our spirits from their urns — " 

perhaps in one sense of the word the only real uni- 
versity in which every branch of human learning has 
its greatest representatives, where the fruits of hu- 
man research in every department of investigation 
are put at; the disposal of the diligent learner, where 
the achievements of the human mind in every age and 
stage of its restless, ceaseless progress are registered 
and catalogued for ready reference and placed within 
the easy reach of all, without money and without 
price. 

And so it seems to me no odd conceit to call a 



Samuel M. Smith 81 

great library a university, as the seat of a learning 
universal in its scope and universal in its accessibility. 
Pursuing the figure, it is to be noted that all courses 
in this school are absolutely "elective." To the 
student is left an unrestricted, unqualified option in 
every particular as to the character and extent of his 
courses; what he shall study, how much, and how, 
and when — all is left to his unfettered choice. So 
far as my observation goes, the only restriction in any 
library is put upon the tongue (possibly in some in- 
stances a grievous bondage) ; but though the mouth 
be fettered, the mind is free. Freedom, however, is 
always a dangerous privilege, and this instance forms 
no exception; its best exercise requires the restraints 
of severe discipline. Any librarian's register will 
illustrate this somewhat vividly, possibly somewhat 
sadly. 

There is danger in the very fullness offered by 
every reasonably complete library. In the vast 
variety of tempting viands spread upon the boun- 
teous table there are large possibilities of intellectual 
dyspepsia for that eater who crams "the stomach of 
his sense" with food unwholesome in character or 
disproportionate in amount. Digestion doubtless 
has often been injured beyond remedy by immature 
minds, who, like other children, feed too exclusively 
on cakes, candies, and pickles to the exclusion of more 
substantial and more wholesome diet. A library so 
misused is a great blessing perverted into an unmiti- 
gated curse; for it is a mistake to say, as some do, 
that any reading is better than none. 

When one walks amid the shelves of a great library 
the mere multitude of candidates for his favor is be- 
wildering. Some ingenious statistician said long ago 
that it would require three hundred and fifty years 
for a diligent student to read only the acknowledged 
standards; constant currents are rapidly increasing 



82 Oratory of the South 

this volume, which rises like a flood unceasingly until 
it leaves man's mind like Noah's dove, with no rest 
for the sole of its foot ! 

Obviously there must be exigent need of severe 
selection lest one fritter away his time in aimless and 
fruitless discursiveness; one may readily recognize 
the temptation besetting a man who is by calling and 
habit a preacher to particularize here by way of 
special and practical application. I shall not, how- 
ever, fall a willing victim to the insidious seduction. 
To recommend books is attended with great risk. A 
volume which to one mind is a veritable mine of 
fertile suggestion may prove to another intellect, 
equal but differently constituted, utterly lacking in 
every element of quickening inspiration; a book which 
one reader finds instinct and abounding in vivid bril- 
liance, a ceaseless source of scintillant sparkle, another 
reader, full peer in every respect of the former, will 
vote irredeemably dull, and heavy as sand. All read- 
ing should be either instructive or stimulating, should 
add either to one's information or inspiration, should 
either extend his knowledge or improve his character. 
To put it more largely yet — without any exception 
whatever, all reading should be either creative or 
recreative. 

So much for a general guiding principle; when it 
comes to the application of this general principle in 
detail, each one must be left to his own discretion as 
to what is best for him. Granted a seriousness of 
purpose, an appreciation alike and equally of the 
advantages and the dangers, one is not likely long or 
greatly to err. The greatest need is to guard against 
an absolute heedlessness that makes reading an aim- 
less exercise, indulged mainly for that most murder- 
ous of all purposes, "the killing of time." 

Let us indulge the hope that this library, the 
gracious gift of a great and generous soul, may ever 



Dunbar Rowland 8 3 

fulfill the office designed by its benevolent donor; and 
prove a center of radiating light, a source of benefi- 
cent influence upon all the widening circle of South 
Carolina's girls who resort hither for preparation to 
brighten and to bless the State, whose pride and joy 
it is to call them her daughters. 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE POET 

DUNBAR ROWLAND 

Director of the Department of Archives and History, State 
of Mississippi 

[Condensed from a speech made in accepting the bust 
of Irwin Russell presented to the Mississippi Department 
of Archives and History by the Mississippi Teachers' Asso- 
ciation, at Gulfport, Miss., May 4, 1907.] 

In the selfish pursuit of the material men sometimes 
forget the silent and unseen forces which are shaping 
the destinies of mankind. In our admiration for the 
arm that executes we lose sight of the brain that con- 
ceives and directs. In paying honor to the statesman 
whose words move myriads of minds, and in singing 
the praises of the victorious commanders of conquer- 
ing legions, we forget that they are merely the instru- 
ments of some mighty principle that had its origin in 
the intellectual ideals of a people, which are made by 
its great scholars and poets, who shape in silence the 
thoughts that control and direct the destiny of nations. 

William Pitt received his inspiration from William 
Shakespeare. Savonarola furnished the spark which 
lit the fires of religious freedom and liberty of con- 
science throughout the world. Washington and Lee, 
two of the greatest apostles of liberty the world has 
ever known, were the incarnations of the highest 
spirit of a civilization that ascended to supremest 
heights upon the ideals of its poets and scholars. 



84 Oratory of the South 

Among the intellectual ideals of a people none give 
more powerful incentives to great achievements than 
the poetic. These are silent and invisible influences, 
but they are the most potent that animate the hearts 
of men. The sacred hymns of the Christian nations 
of the world have been one of the strongest forces 
in breaking the chains of paganism and infidelity 
and in enthroning Christianity. The highest exalta- 
tion of the soul is felt, and the clearest conception of 
God is borne in on the mental vision, through the 
divine outbursts of poetical inspiration which illumine 
the pages of the sacred writings. Every land has its 
native airs and songs, which are more effective than 
its armies and navies in guarding the liberties of the 
people, and which more than all other forces fill their 
hearts with hope and courage. 

Under the influence of the inspiring strains of the 
"Marsellaise Hymn" the people of France overthrew 
a corrupt and tyrannical government and placed the 
tricolor of their country over the proudest and most 
valiant nations of Europe. The "Watch on the 
Rhine" aroused the martial spirit of Germany and 
enabled Bismarck and Von Moltke to create the great 
German Empire. When the Englishman hears 
"God Save the King," though he may be thousands 
of miles away, his moistened eye turns to his native 
land. "The Star-Spangled Banner" arouses in the 
hearts of Americans the sublimest love of liberty and 
independence. These are the things which inspire 
emulation, ambition, love of country, and hatred of 
tyranny and oppression. Where there is no response 
to such things, and no worship of the ideals for 
which they stand, national life and aspiration are 
extinct. 

In every race where man's higher nature has found 
expression in its language, the purest and highest 
ideals are set before the eyes of the people, who, 



Dunbar Rowland 85 

whether they turn scholar or soldier, statesman or 
lawmaker, mechanic or argriculturist, will exhibit in 
their achievements some likeness of the source from 
which they draw their inspiration. Their achieve- 
ments may dazzle the eyes of the world with the 
splendor which action imparts, but it must be the 
ideals which prompted and inspired them to which 
the people must ever look as a permanent foundation 
upon which to build enduring greatness. 

The mortal remains of England's great men rest in 
Westminster Abbey, and in a quiet corner of that 
stately Gothic cathedral there is a section set apart in 
honor of poetic genius, as an evidence of the eternal 
homage to letters paid by a people who have fought 
the battle of human rights and human progress for 
centuries. And it is not strange that England, the 
noble mother of the Anglo-Saxon race, should honor 
Shakespeare, Milton, Goldsmith, Burns, Words- 
worth, and Tennyson above those whose claims to 
greatness rest upon the selfish and sordid accumula- 
tion of wealth. 

Though men have sometimes been worshipers of 
Mammon, there has never been placed in any Pan- 
theon a Midas or a Croesus, and the laurel wreath 
has never been twined about the brow of a man whose 
aspiration raised him no higher than the love of the 
material. The immortal garland for which men run 
must be won on paths, however bleak and rugged, 
which lead to the stars. 

And it was upon such ideals that Irwin Russell, our 
own young poet, sought to shape the expression of 
his life. Brief as it was, his life gave promise of a 
glorious fulfillment. He was the pioneer in a dis- 
tinctive literary field, and in being original gave un- 
mistakable signs of genius of a high order. For 
what he did in honor of it a loving people bring this 
chaplet for his young brow. 



86 Oratory of the South 

Let us believe that it will inspire our whole people 
anew with a love and veneration for those things 
upon which rest a higher and more beautiful civili- 
zation. Let us hope that it will make us worthy of 
having it written of us, as a people, what Browning 
has said of one in these inspiring lines : 

"One who never turned his back, but marched breast for- 
ward, 
Never doubted clouds would break, 
Never dreamed tho' right were worsted, wrong would 
triumph. 
Held, we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, 
Sleep to wake." 



THE PENALTIES OF PROGRESS 

THOMAS W. JORDAN 

Dean of the Academic Department and Professor of Latin, 
University of Tennessee 

[Extract from a baccalaureate address at the University 
Commencement, June 17, 1900.] 

Our cherished doctrine of economics — unrestricted 
competition — is not the panacea we have taken it to 
be. We have exalted it unduly and expected too much 
of it, and are now face to face with conditions in 
which utmost happiness does not follow unlimited 
competition and rivalry. It is a theory of man that 
leaves the man out. It is breaking down under our 
complex civilization, not because it is not the truth, 
but because it is not the whole truth. And half truths 
have been an accursed thing in human experience. 
They are forever converting the cry of liberty in one 
place into the command of a tyrant in another, and 
making the inspiration of one age the damnation of 
the next. 



Thomas W. Jordan 8? 

"That's the old American idee — 
Make a man a man and let him be." 

All very well, but first make him a man. That is 
not done by releasing him from every other obliga- 
tion to earth and heaven and saying: "Now go it. 
Cash is the goal. Every fellow for himself and devil 
take the hindmost." It ends in every fellow for him- 
self and devil take us all. For "I do know," with 
old Thomas Carlyle, "that cash payment is not the 
sole relation of human beings. Cash never yet paid 
one man fully his deserts to another, nor could it, nor 
can it, now or henceforth, to the end of the world. 
In brief, we shall have to dismiss this cash gospel 
rigorously to its own place. We shall have to know 
that there is some infinitely deeper gospel subsidiary, 
explanatory, and daily and hourly corrective of the 
cash one, or else that the cash one and all others are 
fast traveling." 

Animalism, hunger, vanity, and selfishness in gen- 
eral, may be trusted to look out for themselves. The 
work of encouraging them is entirely superfluous. It 
has ended in making us act like so many cattle on a 
crowded car, in which one horns and pushes the one 
in front to make room for himself, and he another, 
and he another, and when all are horned and pushed 
and the weak are down and being trampled to death 
beneath the hoofs of the stronger or more fortunate, 
we call our bovine philosophy the survival of the 
fittest. Its whole tendency is to silence the voices of 
gentleness, meekness, mercy, brotherly kindness, pa- 
tience, charity. Its ear is dull to such strains as 
these: "We, then, that are strong ought to bear the 
infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves." 
"It is more blessed to give than to receive." "We 
are members one of another; and whether one mem- 
ber suffer all the members suffer with it, or one mem- 



88 Oratory of the South 

ber be honored all the members rejoice with it." "He 
that would be greatest among you, let him be the 
servant of all." "Bear ye one another's burdens and 
so fulfill the law of Christ." 

Now, our watches and clocks all go astray unless 
they are constantly regulated and corrected by the ob- 
servations of the heavens. This philosophy sets its 
chronometers by the earth and has lost the reckon- 
ing of the stars. It has turned away our eyes from 
the pillar of cloud and of fire and sent us wandering 
in the wilderness and worshiping a golden calf. 
Against much of the food it has brought us we cry 
out, like the Israelites, "Our very souls loathe it!" 
For whatever the doctrine of laissez faire in econom- 
ics has brought us in the long and bitter struggle for 
industrial emancipation, I am glad. For whatever 
the doctrine of selection and survival has brought us 
in our efforts to understand the history of life, I am 
glad. But each of them and both of them are par- 
tial, and each of them and both of them may become 
and have become baleful unless sweetened and re- 
deemed by the ethics of Jesus and Paul. 

Under the pressure of this sort of teaching, giving 
fine names to our scramble and putting spur to our 
greed, our material progress has outstripped the intel- 
lectual and moral needed to balance it, and the center 
of gravity is displaced. The harvest of this seed- 
sowing has ripened fast in the last quarter of the cen- 
tury — nowhere faster than in our own country. It 
has lowered our ideals. We have put the emphasis 
on what a man has, not on what he is. Our canon 
of conduct has come to be, "Does it pay?" We have 
idolized "get on" rather than get right. We have 
discounted the plain man and woman who live out 
their simple lives in homes of content and peace and 
pay their debts and love their neighbors. We have 
said, "Keep up with the procession," no matter which 



Thomas W. Jordan 89 

way it is headed; "shine and show," whether the 
plumage is paid for or not. Where we couldn't be 
rich we tried to appear so, and yoked our expendi- 
tures to our desires and ambitions rather than our in- 
comes. And so we have seen a decade of wild specu- 
lation and reckless borrowing. It has left us with 
our town lots in the city of nowhere, and our homes, 
our farms, and our factories blanketed with mort- 
gages. We have sowed debt and reaped distress. 
We have sowed extravagance and reaped disaster; 
and when we are looking about for the causes of our 
unrest it will be well to begin at Jerusalem. The one 
ever-present source of our troubles is our ignoble 
selves. 

Every great question is at bottom a moral question ; 
and in all lands, in all times, in all conditions, the 
light in darkness, the guide in perplexity, the star for 
the disappointed and the inspiration for the hopeless, 
is the gospel of the Son of God. This is the majestic 
voice that can say to the troubled waters, "Peace, be 
still." This is the tree whose leaves are for the heal- 
ing of our nation and all nations. The one effective 
sanitary agency for the world, diseased in all its parts, 
is the spirit of the Father, incarnate in the Son, and 
reproduced in the faith-filled lives of His followers. 
Its purpose is to banish sin, the great social and eco- 
nomic as well as spiritual enemy of the race. It re- 
deems business from sordidness, while it saves phi- 
lanthropy from folly. It puts bit and bridle upon 
the animal that is in us and sets free the God. Its 
keynote is peace on earth, good-will toward men. Its 
songs are the solace of our adversity and its prophe- 
cies are the signals of our relief. It reflects upon the 
things that are seen and temporal light from the 
things that are unseen and eternal, and makes all lum- 
inous. This is the force that is swelling the sails of 
the old ship laden with the cares and hopes of hu- 



90 Oratory of the South 

manity. We are sailing under sealed orders, it is 
true, but we have gotten our chart, not from the 
sodden earth, but the sunlit skies; and, with what- 
ever creaking of cordage and straining of timbers 
and buffeting of waves we are moving, that we 
do move is proof of a pilotage not of man, prophetic 
of a harbor not of the earth, but of that radiant shore 
where perfect righteousness will make possible per- 
fect peace. 



THE DUTY OF THE EDUCATED MAN 
TO HIS COUNTRY 

FRANCIS P. VENABLE 

President of the University of North Carolina 

[The concluding part of an address delivered before the 
Alumni Association of Lafayette College, Easton, Pa., June 

21, I9O4.] 

The schools have not made the American people, 
but the people have made the schools, says the re- 
port of a recent commission. Schools, colleges, uni- 
versities, are absolutely essential for a democracy — - 
for a free people and a free church. And one of the 
chief reasons for this may be found in the conserva- 
tism and courage which come through education. 
The voice of the mob does not mean democracy, but 
often the worst form of tyranny, as the French Rev- 
olution testifies ; and it is idle to talk of an equal op- 
portunity for all among an ignorant people. Not all 
educated men are courageous, but the man who has 
attained to true self-mastery shows the highest type 
of courage. He weighs the difficulties, knows the 
dangers, and yet stands undismayed. If right is on 
his side, it matters little how small the minority that 
joins hands with him. In God's own good time right 



Francis P. Venable 91 

and the truth shall prevail,* and he has the courage 
for patient waiting. He has the courage to oppose 
wrong in high places. Misrepresentation, lies, aye, 
death itself, cannot turn him from the path of duty. 
Faith in himself, in his mission, in his God, shining 
like a star, leads him on. 

My friends, there may be talent, there may be 
genius, without such courage and without such faith, 
but it is of a poor and watery kind and of little worth 
in fighting this world's battles, or in the making of a 
people. The truly educated man is such as I have 
painted him, and more. Sometimes God sends one 
such man, full panoplied, to a people — His most 
splendid, precious gift to them. 

For a nation to achieve such a man is no accidental 
merit, says rugged, honest old Carlyle. "Nay, I 
rather think, could we look into the Account-Books 
of the Recording Angel for a course of centuries, no 
part of it is such. There are nations in which such a 
man is, or can be possible; and again there are nations 
in which he is not and cannot. To be practically rev- 
erent of human worth to the due extent and abhor- 
rent of human want of worth; to love human merit 
enough and to abhor human scoundrelism ; that rev- 
erence and its corresponding opposite pole of abhor- 
rence is the supreme strength and glory of a nation, 
without which indeed all other strengths and enormi- 
ties of bullion and arsenals and warehouses are no 
strength. Nations who have lost this quality or who 
never had it, what strong, true man can they hope to 
be possible among them? Age after age they grind 
them down contentedly under the hoofs of their cat- 
tle on their highways; and even find it an excellent 
practice, and pride themselves on Liberty and Equal- 
ity. Most certain it is, no such man will come to 
rule them ; by and by, there will none be born there. 
Such nations cannot have a man to command them, 



92 Oratory of the South 

can only have this or that other scandalous swindling 
copper captain, constitutional Gilt Mountebank, or 
other — the like unsalutary entity by way of ruler; 
and the sins of the fathers are visited upon the child- 
ren in a frightful and tragical manner." 

So reasons the truth-loving, lie-scorning old philos- 
opher, and he speaks truly. It was because this people 
deserved a Washington, a Lincoln, and a Lee that 
such leaders were vouchsafed them and such glorious 
lives lived in their country's service. And if we 
cleave straight to the heart of things, as our fathers 
did, and follow not the false gods of materialism, 
mammon, and unconsecrated intellect, our children 
also shall deserve and shall have such leaders. 

But some may say, granting all of this, still there 
are few such men in a generation or in a country. 
What message have you for the greater number of 
us — those who have been favored with the oppor- 
tunity of education, but have not attained complete 
self-mastery nor developed great powers? Ah, my 
brothers, you have your responsibility, your duty, and 
your place in the great scheme. See that you render 
your service, even though it appear slight and of little 
moment. 

For all life has one meaning, one truest, highest 
meaning, and that is service. To those who have 
had the higher training, it means the nobler service 
as leaders — leaders in all that is for the good of the 
people and the building of the nation. There is 
danger lest the educated man should love too much 
the quiet and ease of the scholar and should hold him- 
self aloof from practical affairs, withdrawing as far 
as may be from public life. This is but a refined sel- 
fishness, and he who so lives is repaying but poorly 
his debt to the community. I know there is much to 
grate upon his finer sensitiveness. The appeals to 
the lower passions of the masses, the personalities and 



Francis P. Venable 93 

bitterness, all jar upon him, and often the methods 
of machine politics shock him, but what hope is there 
of change or betterment if all men of his type hold 
aloof? Shut in his study, out of contact with busy, 
jostling, intensely living men, and out of sympathy 
with them,- he becomes a doctrinaire, weaving imprac- 
ticable, fine-spun theories, of little or no value in this 
practical every-day world. Such men have their uses, 
of course, but they have done much to discredit higher 
education in the eyes of the public and to make the 
community pause and consider whether it was not 
costing too dear to educate men of their kind. They 
have given ground for the oft-repeated accusation 
that education unfits a man for active, practical life. 
I would not have the patriotism of the educated 
man the grudging kind which springs solely from a 
sense of obligation, but the willing kind which springs 
from gratitude and leads to a loving service. It 
should begin at home, in local affairs, the develop- 
ment of our own neighborhood or little community, 
the leadership in all that makes life fuller for those 
around us, and the sweet and wholesome influence 
will be diffused in ever widening circles. And re- 
member that mere criticism and fault-finding are sel- 
dom productive of good. The critical, rather than 
the helpful, attitude is often taken by the educated 
man. Of course he can see farther, and hence criti- 
cism is easier for him, but he loses his patience and 
toleration for the opinions of others. In the past 
half decade there has been a great deal of criticism 
and even virulent abuse of our country coming very 
largely from college-bred men. It seems to me that 
the truly wise and loyal part is to offer such advice 
and suggestions as may seem best to you, and, if re- 
jected, to do your utmost in support of those upon 
whom the burden and responsibility of action falls, 
even though they think differently from you. What 



94 Oratory of the South 

avails it to sit on the broken shards of your cherished 
plans and croak out the pending ruin of your coun- 
try? 

I tell you we have a country to be proud of, even 
if it is not always directed as you or I would have it; 
and that quiet scene a few months ago, unheralded 
by pomp, or boast, or braggart show, when our flag 
was hauled down and the flag of a free Cuba unfurled 
over a people freed by our treasure and our blood, 
thrilled every fiber of my being, for in all history I 
know of no such glorious act done with such a grand 
simplicity. And can you not trust such a country that 
it will treat with equal justice and unselfish kindness 
other people who have come within its power to 
bless ? 

There are grave problems confronting our nation 
to-day — dangers that threaten the integrity of our 
institutions and the very existence of the Republic. 
Among these are proper assimilation and absorption 
of the vast influx of foreign races who seek our shores 
as a refuge from distress and oppression. Another is 
the conflict between labor and capital, both sides now 
gathering strength and forces for a titanic struggle. 
And yet another is the burden of an alien, inferior 
race, dependent and yet free, and yearly growing in 
numbers and in insistency that their problem be 
solved. What need to mention others ? It is enough 
to show that there is an urgent call for men trained to 
think out great problems and knowing truth and lov- 
ing justice and mercy, who shall help our people to 
solve these problems and lead them safely past these 
dangers. 

Oh, you who come from the schools, teach the 
people that there is no liberty without knowledge! 
The Master has said, "Ye shall know the truth, and 
the truth shall make you free." Teach them to know 
and love the truth and scorn all lies. Teach them 



\ 



Charles D. Mclver 95 



that the highest liberty comes from a knowledge of 
the laws of life and obedience to them. Lead them 
in a liberty which is not license and a freedom which 
begets no wrong. 



THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN 

CHARLES D. M'lVER 

For some time President of the North Carolina State Nor- 
mal College for Women, at Greensboro, N. C. 

[Extract from an address at the fourth annual Conference 
for Education in the South, at Winston-Salem, N. C, April, 
1 901.] 

The supreme question in civilization is education. 
From the standpoint of communities, states, and na- 
tions, education is an effort to preserve and transmit 
to posterity the best that we can see, and know, and 
be, and do. Sometimes we think it is a pity that a 
good man who has learned to be of service to his 
fellows should be called out of the world. So some- 
times we may think about an enterprising and useful 
generation; but, after all, the generations of men 
are but relays in civilization's march on its journey 
from savagery to the millennium. Each generation 
owes it to the past and to the future that no previous 
worthy attainment or achievement, whether of 
thought or deed or vision, shall be lost. It is also 
under the highest obligation to make at least as much 
progress on the march as has been made by any gen- 
eration that has . gone before. Education is simply 
civilization's effort to propagate and perpetuate its 
life and its progress. 

The demand for universal education does not 
imply, as some seem to think, that all people are to 
be educated alike, or that education will make all 



96 Oratory of the South 

equally intelligent or cultured or skilled. It does 
mean, however, that there is not a human being who 
ought not to have a fair chance in the period of child- 
hood and youth to learn to read easily and with some 
understanding and appreciation the thought of the 
world as contained in its standard and current litera- 
ture. It means that every child should have an op- 
portunity, but a few years at least, to come in daily 
contact with a teacher of character, ambition, and 
power. It means that every youth should have an 
opportunity to measure his mental powers in com- 
parison with the mental powers of his fellows, and 
that he should thus be aided in discovering the work 
for which he is best fitted, and then that he should 
have special training for that work. 

Education is expensive, but the need of this hour 
is a number of educational evangelists with sufficient 
courage, eloquence, logic, and power to convince the 
people of the profound truth that ignorance and il- 
literacy cost more than education. 

It is very difficult for a rural people to discard the 
primitive notion that land is the only real estate. 
They are slow to see that in a civilized country the 
value of land and land products is not so great as 
the value of mind and mind products — that brain is 
better property than land and that ideas and inven- 
tions multiply a thousandfold the natural products of 
the earth. Ideas are worth more than acres, and the 
possessors of ideas will always hold in financial bond- 
age those whose chief possession is acres of land. 

Money invested in the education of a man is a good 
investment, but the dividend which it yields is fre- 
quently confined to one generation and is of the ma- 
terial kind. It strengthens his judgment, gives him 
foresight, teaches him to be orderly and law-abiding, 
and makes him a more productive laborer in any field 
of activity. It does the same thing for a woman, but 



Charles D. Mclver 97 

her field of activity is usually in company with the 
children, and, therefore, the money invested in the 
education of women yields a better educational divi- 
dend than that invested in the education of men. It 
is plain, therefore, that the state and society, for the 
sake of their present and future educational interest, 
ought to decree that for every dollar spent by the 
government, State or Federal, and by philanthropists 
in the training of men, at least another dollar shall be 
invested in the work of educating womankind. 

If it be claimed that woman is weaker than man, 
then so much the more reason for giving her at least 
an equal educational opportunity with him. If it be 
admitted, as it must be, that she is by nature the chief 
educator of children, her proper training is the 
strategic point in the education of the race. If equal- 
ity in culture be desirable, and if congeniality between 
husbands and wives after middle life be important, 
then a woman should have more educational oppor- 
tunities in youth than a man; for a man's business 
relations bring him in contact with every element of 
society, and, if he have fair native intelligence, he will 
continue to grow intellectually during the active pe- 
riod of his life, whereas the confinements of home 
and the duties of motherhood allow little opportunity 
to a woman for any culture except that which comes 
from the association with little children. This ex- 
perience of living with innocent children is a source 
of culture by no means to be despised, but how much 
better would it be for the mother and the father and 
the children, if the mother's education in her youth 
could always be such as would enable her in after life 
to secure for herself and her children that inspiration 
and solace which come from familiarity with the 
great books of the world. 



98 Oratory of the South 

.„,--,-■-. » j .. i 

THE CULTURE AFFORDED BY SCIEN- 
TIFIC TRAINING 

HENRY LOUIS SMITH 

President of Davidson (N. C.) College 

[Concluding portion of an Alumni oration delivered at 
the University of Virginia Commencement, 1905.] 

Scientific training imparts to the mind accuracy, 
logical habits, and freedom. But there is another 
and greater benefit which is hard to name or define. 
For lack of a better word I will call it inspiration. 

A scholar may write volumes on Greek preposi- 
tions, or English synonyms, or Latin syntax, yet never 
once find his whole being thrilled with a sense of 
sublimity; never once see before him the blaze of 
insufferable glory, and hear the Voice saying: "Put 
off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon 
thou standest is holy ground." These visions come 
not in the library, but on Mount Horeb, where the 
soul is alone with nature and its God. 

In the study of the material universe we learn 
something of the vastness of time and space. We are 
lifted above the littleness and inevitable debasement 
of our petty human lives by the grandeur of nature, 
her eternal calm and infinite patience, and the wide 
sweep of her changeless laws. Here there is no sordid 
greed nor selfish striving, no neighborhood slanders, 
nor malice cloaked in honeyed words, no silly social 
fads, no yellow journals nor howling mobs, no filth 
and mire of "practical politics." How base and 
mean and unworthy do these things appear, how the 
din and clamor of our noisy world die into reverent 
silence when brought face to face with the hoary 
antiquities of nature and her infinities of time and 
space ! 

But again. The material universe is the concrete 



Henry Louis Smith 99 

thought of God. In its study we become His interpre- 
ters and think His thoughts after Him. To the un- 
trained and unreflecting our earth is but a vast mon- 
otony of rocks and soil, of grass and trees. Its moun- 
tains are but piles of earth and stone, its river valleys 
but unmeaning furrows. Its thousand variations of 
topography have no past history nor present signifi- 
cance; its myriad voices are but a Babel of unmean- 
ing noises. Let a knowledge of the laws and secret 
processes of nature open the eyes of the mind, and 
the very sight of our battle-scarred earth is an in- 
spiration. To the scientist alone do earth and air 
and water reveal the secret springs of their multiplied 
activities. Nature hails him as her interpreter; to 
his attentive ear her thousand voices become articu- 
late and intelligible. Every cliff and valley, every 
mountain plateau and waste of level sand, every sea- 
beach and river canon, is pregnant with meaning and 
bears testimony to a wondrous history. He looks 
back through an immemorial past and watches the 
implacable struggle of fire and water for the posses- 
sion of a new world. 

He realizes the majesty of the Creator's power, 
as His hand shapes our planet in the depths of space, 
and with fire and flood, tidal wave and ice sheet, vol- 
canic outburst and peaceful coral growth, prepares 
it for the abode of man. He catches glimpses of 
God's wisdom and His love as he watches the atmos- 
phere slowly purified for man's breathing, the har- 
bors dug out for his ships, the great plains fertilized 
for his crops, the coal and iron stored underground 
for his use, and the round world crowded with evi- 
dences of a Father's loving foresight. He traces the 
wondrous procession of strange plants and uncouth 
animals that peopled the forming earth — the mon- 
sters of the ooze and slime — fattening on the luxuri- 
ance of the young planet. He sees the continents 



100 Oratory of the South 

forming one by one, the mountain ranges slowly lift- 
ing their rocky summits toward the clouds, the oceans 
sullenly retreating to their foreordained limits. It 
is when we thus follow in the awful steps of the Cre- 
ator, when the mind vibrates with the thunder of his 
power, and we draw back with throbbing heart and 
reverent hand the curtain of His omniscience, that we 
rise above the miasmatic level of a petty world and 
breathe air fresh from the hills of God. 

Would you realize the truth of what we carelessly 
repeat so often, concerning the minute care and 
watchful oversight of the Infinite Mind, that the 
hairs of our head are all numbered? Then penetrate 
with the microscope into the world of the invisibly 
little. 

The feathers of the tiniest insect are fashioned 
as carefully as the wings of a condor. A single drop 
of stagnant water swarms with countless thousands 
of animalculae, yet to each of these he giveth its meat 
in due season as certainly and carefully as to the 
young lions that roar and suffer hunger. Here you 
learn, what most people never dream, that with God 
there is no great nor small, no distinction between im- 
portant and unimportant. The life of an animalcule 
is as carefully adjusted to its environment, and as 
minutely guided and controlled, as the growth and 
decay of a world. 

Let me cite one other instance of this illumination 
and uplifting due to scientific culture. The untu- 
tored rustic reads in his Bible, "The heavens declare 
the glory of God," and on his way home at night 
from the fields, as he admires the star-spangled sky 
over his head, thinks he understands its meaning. 
So the wren, flitting back and forth between his 
woodpile and fence corner, admires the grass and 
daisies, and might, in bird language, talk enthusiasti- 
cally of the beauties of nature. What can he know 



Henry Louis Smith 101 

or dream of the panorama unrolled beneath the eagle, 
soaring in the depths of blue over his head? 

Would you realize something of the Psalmist's 
words? Then take the wings of light and travel 
among the hundred million flaming suns that people 
the depths of space. Watch them all, forming neb- 
ula, flaming sun, huge comet and tiny asteroid, planet 
crammed with life and satellite dead and withered, 
a vast company of revolving worlds, sweeping in aw- 
ful silence along their appointed orbits, till the im- 
agination faints under its load, and the mind aches 
with insufferable sublimity. What perfection of 
order, what marvel of harmony, what majesty of 
power, what eloquence of grandeur ! Now, with the 
intellect overwhelmed by the Infinite, with heart suf- 
fused and trembling with awe and adoration, turn 
from the God revealed in nature to His written mes- 
sage, and tell me if you find no deeper meaning in 
those words of old: "The heavens declare the glory 
of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork." 

Such are some of the fruits of scientific study, 
such are the visions vouchsafed by science to the rev- 
erent minds that enter her mystic portals; and be- 
lieve me, young gentlemen, it is worth a great deal 
in this little life of ours to catch ever and anon, above 
its petty clamorous noises, the voice of the Infinite 
and Eternal, calling to our souls from the depths of 
Time and Space, and on the dusty, contracted by-path 
of our daily lives "to feel the jar of unseen waves, 
and hear the thunder of an unknown sea breaking 
along an unimagined shore." 



102 Oratory of the South 

THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 

WILLIAM R. ABBOTT 

Principal of the Bellevue (Va.) High School 

[Extract from an oration delivered before the Alumni 
Society of the University of Virginia, June 16, 1897.] 

The great paradox in education was to Thomas 
Jefferson no paradox — that if you would raise the 
level of the education of a people you must begin by 
improving the higher education ; that, as in the world 
of matter it is only by the bending down of some liv- 
ing form into the inorganic sphere that the dead 
atoms there can be gifted with the properties of 
vitality, so in the world of mind light and life come 
from above. "All civilization has begun with the 
higher education of a few, and all forms of popular 
culture have proceeded from higher sources. In the 
development of popular education, as of popular gov- 
ernment, there have always been recognized leaders. 
Neither science nor religion could have gone forth in 
fertilizing streams for the benefit of mankind unless 
there had been mountain sources above the plain; and 
the history of education is one long stream of con- 
tinuous, inexhaustible flow from such high springs." 

Never and nowhere have these truths found more 
signal illustration than in the history of our Univer- 
sity. No sooner was its organization complete, no 
sooner was its machinery set in motion, and the fin- 
ished product began to be turned out, than a veritable 
renaissance followed in the education of the State. 
Colleges and schools, high and low, felt the vitalizing 
influence. Into old establishments fresh life was in- 
fused; new schools were founded with standards of 
attainment hitherto undreamt of; greater and greater 
from year to year was the demand for her graduates 
to fill the chairs in colleges in this and all the South- 



William R. Abbott j 103 

ern States; larger and larger was the proportion of 
her most distinguished sons that found their vocation 
in the profession of teaching; until at the outbreak 
of that war which convulsed our political, social, and 
educational systems, there was no State in the Union 
in which there was as large a proportion of youth 
seeking the higher learning, and certainly none in 
which the calling of the teacher was held as high in 
the respect and honor of the community. And even 
now, out of all proportion to their numbers, her 
alumni fill her own chairs and man the colleges and 
schools of Virginia and all the States of the South 
and West; she is the recognized source of supply of 
the exponents of the advanced standards of modern 
education, and her beneficent influence is felt in the 
public schools of every village and hamlet of the 
Commonwealth. So that, ignoring for the time all 
her other manifold blessings to the State and to 
society, I dare affirm that in this single respect— her 
inestimable service to "the holy cause of education" — 
she is entitled to our reverence and admiration and 
gratitude, and has in measure a hundred-fold repaid 
the debt for all that has ever been expended in her 
foundation and maintenance. 

May I express the hope that the spirit of this meet- 
ing, this renewed communion with the genius of the 
spot so hallowed in our memories with all the in- 
spiring associations clinging to it, may revive our in- 
terest, quicken our activity, and commit us as by a 
public sacrament to bring to her present exigency our 
best services, collectively and as individuals, each in 
his own sphere aiding by influence and active effort, 
so to multiply the school, increase the libraries and 
develop the means of education here planted, that as 
long as the circling seasons endure the golden quiver 
of our Alma Mater may be full of arrows to track 
their rolling years with light. 



104 Oratory of the South 

On yonder mountain sleeps the dust of the great 
apostle of human liberty, the mighty champion of 
popular education, the "Father of the University of 
Virginia"; but here breathes his living spirit, here 
survive in imperishable forms his comprehensive 
views, his elegant tastes, his expansive sympathies. 
His very fame overshadows these walls, as their tute- 
lary genius. I would invoke the mute eloquence of 
that immortal presence to plead with us the cause of 
letters, bound up for us in the fortunes of this Uni- 
versity. May the aspiration ascend from every heart, 
that as long as the heights of Monticello shall lift 
themselves to heaven, so long may the domes and 
spires of this University rise up in all the majesty of 
proportion to greet the morning sun; so long may the 
ingenuous youth of the land we love repair hither in 
ever-increasing number to drink deep of her living 
fountains, to kindle the fires of patriotism at her al- 
tars, to "draw light in their golden urns" from her 
central sun, to take from her rich arsenal the celestial 
weapons, and to learn from her wise lips the "magic 
runes" which will make them in after-life the in- 
vincible champions of truth, freedom, and righteous- 
ness. 



NEW ENGLAND AND THE SOUTH 

EDWIN A. ALDERMAN 

President of the University of Virginia 

[Extract from a speech in response to the toast, "Sectional- 
ism and Nationality," delivered at the annual banquet of the 
New England Society, New York City, December 22, 
1906.] 

A goodly library has been written in an effort to 
account for the antagonisms of New England and the 
South on the basis of difference between the Puritan 



Edwin A. Alderman 105 

and the Cavalier, as those names have been used to 
define two types of Englishmen. The matter will 
never be settled on this basis. It is true that English 
Puritans practically founded and settled the charac- 
ter of New England. It would be a dull and a sense- 
less mind that did not realize the majestic significance 
of the coming of the Puritan to this continent, who 
did not understand in what a revolutionary fire was 
wrought the temper of his soul in the old home land; 
who did not feel gratitude for the sheer strength of 
moral imagination, the exact idealism, the genius of 
intelligent thrift and passionate instinct for order, 
which he poured into the making of this Republic. 

I can understand the enthusiasm of a son of New 
England for the gentle Pilgrims, sailing westward 
upon that epic ship, the Mayflower, or for those stern 
Englishmen who later came to this shore, professing 
an iron faith, seeking the will of God, bearing with 
them the town meeting, the public school, an exalta- 
tion of humanity, an appreciation of the potential 
value of the common man, and a superabundant de- 
termination and capacity to look after their own busi- 
ness, which sometimes overflowed onto the domain of 
the business of others. Institutions, ideals, and 
ideas were in their right hand, and in their left, will- 
fulness and foresight and common sense, as inflexible 
and as durable as granite. 

Some eighteen millions of this indomitable breed 
inhabit the American continent to-day, after three 
hundred years of experience and achievement. They 
have come pretty close to enforcing their point of 
view in things political, social, and economic upon the 
rest of this nation. They have lost much of their ho- 
mogeneity in their struggle with foreign elements, 
but they have reproduced a thousand New Englands 
on the rolling plains of the Northwest and the far 
West. They have outgrown their religious notions 



106 Oratory of the South 

so often that I do not just know where they are "at" 
now religiously. Perhaps that point is best expressed 
by Mr. Barrett Wendell in his declaration that in 
their religious growth they have oscillated from a 
consideration of "what the devil is" to a consideration 
of "what the devil anything is !" 

Englishmen of the same age of revolutionary feel- 
ing, and of the same passion for principle, settled and 
gave character to Tidewater Virginia. Men call 
these Englishmen "Cavaliers." They had their re- 
ligion, though it was primarily adventure and con- 
quest rather than religion, that haled them over the 
sea. Following afar off, they even took a hand at 
persecuting a Quaker or two now and then. They 
were just as ready as the Puritans to fight for an 
ideal. As the tide flowed westward, many of them, 
too, left home for conscience' sake. They knew the 
same sensation of devotion to a cause, and they had a 
conception of political liberty just as clear, and per- 
haps an even greater genius for political debate and 
philosophical exposition. I can understand the en- 
thusiasm of a Virginian for these large-statured men 
of their Tidewater lands, out of whom came our su- 
preme national hero, and a Homeric group of re- 
sourceful men, without whose influence it would be 
difficult to see how this Republic could have ever been 
born. It is endlessly pleasant to a Southerner to hark 
back to their manly simplicity, their activity, their dis- 
interested public spirit, their continental grasp, and 
their wholesome, catholic lovableness. 

Long generations afterward, Robert E. Lee flow- 
ered out of the same bud, very like the old stock, 
only gentler and more able, through virtue and suf- 
fering, to evoke the love of millions. Two such men 
as Washington and Lee in one century is a mighty 
tribute to the character of the Tidewater stock. 

In the grip of great economic forces these two 



Edwin A. Alderman 107 

groups of Englishmen thought deeply and differently 
about the meaning of liberty. Fate driven, they came 
to war, the New Englander fighting for. the liberty 
of the individual wherever seated and the majesty of 
the idea of union; the Southerner for the liberty 
of local self-government and the right of English- 
men to determine their affairs — which was the orig- 
inal essence of the American idea of liberty. No war 
in human history was a sincerer conflict than the 
American Civil War. It was not a war of conquest 
or glory. To call it rebellion is to speak ignorantly. 
To call it treason is to add viciousness to stupidity. 
It was a war of ideals, of principles, of political con- 
ceptions, of loyalty to ancient ideals of English free- 
dom held dearer than life by both sides. Neither 
abolitionist nor fire-eater brought on this war. It 
was a "brothers' war," which ought to have been 
avoided, but which was brought on, as our human 
nature is constituted, by the operation of economic 
forces and the clashing of inherited feelings, woven 
by no will of either side into the life of the Republic. 
It was settled at last by neither abolitionist nor fire- 
eater, but by men of the West who had not inherited 
unbroken political traditions, but simply saw the 
union of American States as the ark of their salva- 
tion and beheld its flag, as Webster beheld it, "full 
high advanced, floating over land and sea." 

Some great facts were forever settled by the war, 
but few great principles. A new American ideal of 
nationality was set up; the curse of slavery was re- 
moved, the indestructibility of the Union was estab- 
lished, and a great debate in political philosophy was 
ended with a blow. The value to liberty of the idea 
of local self-government still remains, as before, the 
deepest and most vital principle in our national life. 
The doctrine of States' rights as a necessity of popu- 
lar government is again engaging the thought of 



X 



108 Oratory of the South 

this Republic, because mightier forces than war are 
vitalizing this old issue under new forms, and those 
who understand it best and love it dearest and who 
will fight for it longest are those who live in the 
States where devotion to it once had power to sepa- 
rate them from a country they had fought to found. 
There is nothing stranger or more interesting in po- 
litical history than the recurrence of this best loved 
dogma of the South, unconnected with secession and 
unconfused with slavery, as necessary to Federal 
union and human freedom. If, as Mr. Root thinks, 
and I have the feeling that his speech is to be thought 
of as a prophecy and a warning rather than as a plea 
for centralization, the struggle is on between the 
growing power of the Federal Government and the 
decreasing authority of the States, you can count on 
the Southerner to be on the side of maintaining the 
just balance, for no American sees more clearly than 
he just what is the vital spot in the liberty of a State. 
He is a learner, albeit a rapid learner, in the art of 
using the machinery of local self-government to en- 
rich and beautify a State, but he is a past master in 
the matter of insight into the very core of democratic 
freedom. 

Our present democracy, so long concerned with 
interpretation of constitutions, now strikes at the 
very nature of the social order. No democracy 
has ever been tempted like this one. No democ- 
racy has ever been able to organize its forces like 
this one. No such field of exploitation has ever 
opened before any democracy, and never before has 
the current of the world's genius contributed to per- 
fecting machinery for such vast exploitation. No de- 
mocracy ever dreamed how it would act if fabulous 
wealth, ever increasing through the agency of co- 
operation, had gone to its head. This is not a corrupt 
nation. Its currents are kindly and just and free and 



Hugh A. Dinsmore 109 

idealistic as of old. Its public men are honest and its 
merchants are honest. We are simply facing a new 
question in human liberty, a new phase of the ever- 
expanding content of democracy — how to retain in 
our system the priceless glory of individual excellence 
and individual initiative, which is our deepest national 
instinct, and how to control in the interests of justice 
the great co-operative forces which the plans of this 
giant age demand. 

These two eldest children of American life I love 
to believe still see the Republic of their fathers 
as a beautiful spiritual adventure. All the world's 
changes or noises cannot wipe out or hush their old 
solemn belief in its mission and its destiny and in the 
hopes that mankind has built about it. Who can be 
better fitted, then, to bring to it, in the perils that 
await all growing states, the best measure of their 
tempered strength, each according to its several abili- 
ties — New England, her wealth of orderly knowl- 
edge, her patient habits of study, her technical power, 
her moral perception, her ability to translate democ- 
racy into form of efficiency; the South, conservative 
and proud and honest, her best spiritual contribution 
to American life, the purity of her thought about 
government, the unselfish attitude of her service to 
the State, her pride of region and her love of home. 



THE SOUTH AND THE CONSTITUTION 

HUGH A. DINSMORE 

Congressman from Arkansas 

[Extract from a speech on "Federal Election Laws," de- 
livered in the House of Representatives, October 2, 1893.] 

Mr. Speaker, I wish to say in behalf of my native 
State of Arkansas that no State in this Union has a 



110 Oratory of the South 

people more devoted to our beloved country, its flag, 
and its institutions than hers. And though they have 
drunk the cruel cup of war to its bitter dregs ; though 
they can never forget the pitiful pictures of ruin and 
desolation left by fire and sword in their once beauti- 
ful land, peaceful, prosperous, and happy, there is no 
people in this broad land, in whatever State or sec- 
tion, that would be sooner or more cheerfully afield 
at the bugle call to defend the honor of the flag or the 
liberty of the people. 

I wish that gentlemen upon that side and upon this 
could have been present and witnessed the condition 
of our country at the end of that most unhappy pe- 
riod. Our citizens of this day were in large measure 
the soldiers of the fortune of the lost cause ; and what 
matters it now whether they were right or wrong? 
They fought for their convictions of right, and every 
true-hearted soldier of the victorious side will con- 
cede to them this justice. At this day has there not 
been time for passion to subside; has there not been 
time for all the feeling of hate and enmity to have 
passed away? 

The close of the war came. The Confederate sol- 
dier had staked his all upon the cast of the die, and it 
went down in the dust with the flag he had followed 
in battle. While the victorious troops of the Union 
were returning to their homes untouched by war, to 
the merry strains of victorious music and with ban- 
ners gayly flying, he, in his deep humiliation — con- 
quered, but not his spirit gone — inspired alone by his 
faith in God and his own manhood and love for 
his family, returned to the country that had been his 
home; the country that he had left smiling with 
golden harvests and adorned by beautiful home- 
steads, surrounded by happiness and prosperity. But 
when with faltering steps, broken in fortune and in 
health, he came back, the besom of war had swept 



Hugh A. Dinsmore 111 

all in its relentless track, and there was but little 
left of that which had been . to him so dear in 
the past. 

The fields that had been white with the fleecy fiber 
that clothes the world, that had been yellow with the 
waving corn in the golden harvest time, were grown 
up with the unrestrained forests of nature; and the 
home around which his heart had clung throughout 
all these hard years, that gone, too ; the old roof-tree 
about which hung every dear association of child- 
hood, youth, and young manhood melted by the 
flames of hungry war; only a black, crumbling chim- 
ney stood as a melancholy headstone at the grave of 
dead hopes, of buried ambition. 

Did they falter? Did they give up? On the con- 
trary, they turned themselves with new purpose to 
build up a new citizenship under a new condition of 
things. I need not speak of what they have accom- 
plished. Every year from their fields come the teem- 
ing fruits of harvest that clothe and feed the millions 
of the world. Every year they pour into the coffers 
of the Treasury taxes to support and add to the 
glory of this Government which we all respect and 
love. Without a pension, asking none, expecting 
none, feeling that none is due, each year these old 
Confederates contribute to the fund that goes to pay 
the pensions of the honorable Union soldier who 
fought for the flag and saved the Union. Are they 
worthy of citizenship? Unmurmuring and uncom- 
plaining, they perform its every duty, and all they 
ask is that they have equal recognition with the rest 
of the citizens of this Government and have their 
rights respected. Gentlemen, of such, and their de- 
scendants, are in large part the constituents I repre- 
sent. Are you willing to honor and to trust them as 
your fellow-citizens? Whatever may be your answer, 
be assured of this: I am prouder to stand here as 



112 Oratory of the South 

their chosen servant than I would be to be the leader 
of a conquering host. 

But how long, I say, must the people of this Union 
be kept under the operation of war measures? To 
raise the revenues necessary to prosecute the war in 
suppression of rebellion, and never upon any pretense 
of protection, a high tariff was imposed upon foreign 
imports, which, the war over, it has taxed even 
Republican recklessness and prodigality to devise 
plausible means to dispose of to the people hungering 
for paternal support. 

The beneficent pension system has been abused and 
extended until the names that once made it a roll 
of honor are becoming obscured and confounded 
in a confused list of camp-followers, beach-combers, 
bounty-jumpers, and imposters. 

The present statute authorizing Federal interfer- 
ence in elections in the States, and which it is our pres- 
ent duty to repeal (and the duty shall be well and 
fully performed), has not been thought to be suffi- 
cient to answer the demands of Government under 
Republican views. Led on by a partisan President, 
swayed and biased by sectional bitterness, the Repub- 
lican party in the Fifty-first Congress enacted a scene 
in the political drama which will be long remembered 
by the people of this country. How they struggled, 
with what unyielding purpose and nervous energy 
they strove to enact the force bill, a law ten-fold more 
nefarious and disastrous to free elections than the one 
we are about to repeal ! But they failed; their efforts 
proved abortive. Thank God for the few patriotic 
Republicans in the other wing of the Capitol, who, 
defying the party whip, gave their assistance to save 
the people at the polls from the otherwise inevitable 
fate of Federal bayonets. 

It has always appeared to me, Mr. Speaker, put- 
ting aside all consideration of the Constitution itself 



Hugh A. Dinsmore 113 

and the peculiar wisdom which characterizes its pro- 
visions, and looking only to the source from which it 
emanated, that the great and patriotic men of wisdom 
who created it, in the evolution of their thought and 
discussion, stimulated by high and noble aims, being 
moved by a sacred desire and determination to lay the 
foundation stones of a government which would be 
the freest and best all civilization had ever known, 
and one which they hoped would live in perpetuity to 
bless its citizens and to honor the men who inspired 
it, were better prepared to know what was best calcu- 
lated to promote with success their undertaking, and 
to give permanency and health and vigor and justice 
to that Government, than any, however wise, who 
were to follow them as statesmen having in charge 
the interest of the people living under the beneficence 
of the Government which they had formed. 

There is no man free from party zeal. It is impos- 
sible for the human mind to free itself from party 
bias. Therefore I hold, sir, that the safety and wel- 
fare of our institutions depend largely upon adhering 
as closely as may be to the principles and declarations 
of our organic law. And when we come to consider 
the instrument itself, we are more impressed with the 
justice and wisdom of its provisions and the danger 
of departing from it. It has been said, sir, upon this 
floor, more in the spirit of reproach than of commen- 
dation, that Democrats are ever ready to stand up 
and defend the Constitution; that Democratic mem- 
bers are alert to detect in any proposed measure a 
conflict with constitutional provisions; that they are 
the champions of the Constitution. 

Mr. Speaker, whatever may have been the spirit 
with which these things were said, I feel, sir, that no 
higher tribute could be paid to the party of which I 
am an humble member than to say they are true. 
We do honor the Constitution of our country; we 



114 Oratory of the South 

venerate it as a great and beneficent gift handed down 
to us from men consecrated to a noble and humane 
purpose and undertaking — one full of the inestimable 
blessings of liberty; and that which inspires in me 
more admiration for the party which I love than 
aught else is that in my opinion it is truer than any 
other party to the principles laid down in this honored 
instrument, which is the organic law of our land, and 
therefore to the principles of freedom most condu- 
cive to the happiness and liberty of the people. 

NO COLONIES 

GEORGE GRAHAM VEST 

Late United States Senator from Missouri 

[Extract from a speech in the United States Senate, 
December 12, 1898.] 

It seems to me peculiarly appropriate at this time 
to examine what are the powers of Congress in re- 
gard to the acquisition and government of new terri- 
tory. When eminent statesmen ridicule "the swad- 
dling clothes" made by Washington and Madison, it 
is surely time to ask whether the American people are 
ready to follow these apostles of the New Evangel 
in revolutionizing our Government and trampling 
upon the teachings and policies which have made us 
great and prosperous. 

Every schoolboy knows, or ought to know, that the 
Revolutionary War, which gave us existence as a 
people, was fought for four years exclusively against 
the colonial system of Europe. Our fathers did not 
in the commencement of that struggle contemplate 
independence from the mother country. When 
the people of Rhode Island burned the British 
war sloop Gas-pee in Narragansett Bay, and the 
people of Massachusetts threw overboard the cargo 



George Graham Vest 115 

of tea in Boston harbor, they acted as British subjects, 
proclaiming their loyalty to the Crown of England. 
When Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and Rich- 
ard Henry Lee met at the old Raleigh tavern in 
Williamsburg, Virginia, and indorsed the action of 
Rhode Island and Massachusetts, they proclaimed 
themselves English subjects, loyal to the king, and 
only demanded the rights that were given to them 
as Englishmen by Magna Charta and the Bill of 
Rights. 

What is the colonial system against which our 
fathers protested? It is based upon the fundamental 
idea that the people of immense areas of territory 
can be held as subjects, never to become citizens; that 
they must pay taxes and be impoverished by govern- 
mental exaction without having anything to do with 
the legislation under which they live. Against taxa- 
tion without representation our fathers fought for the 
first four years of the Revolution, struggling against 
the system which England then attempted to impose 
upon them, and which was graphically described by 
Thomas Jefferson as the belief that nine-tenths of 
mankind were born bridled and saddled and the other 
tenth booted and spurred to ride them. When war 
became flagrant and battles had been fought and 
blood had been shed, the patriots of the Revolution 
came to the conclusion that there must be final separa- 
tion from the British throne. Thomas Jefferson then 
penned the immortal Declaration upon the basic idea 
that all governments derive their just powers from 
the consent of the governed. 

Mr. President, it is incredible that the men who 
fought for seven long years, without money, without 
men almost, and without arms, against the proudest 
and strongest nation in the world, resisting the doc- 
trine upon which the colonial system of Europe is 
based, should, after being rescued by Providence 



116 Oratory of the South 

from its thraldom, deliberately put this doctrine in 
the written Constitution framed to govern them and 
their children. 

Sir, we are told that this country can do anything, 
Constitution or no Constitution. We are a great 
people — great in war, great in peace — but we are 
not greater than the people who once conquered the 
world, not with long-range guns and steel-clad ships, 
but with the short sword of the Roman legion and 
the wooden galleys that sailed across the Adriatic. 
The colonial system destroyed all hope of republican- 
ism in the olden time. It is an appanage of mon- 
archy. It can exist in no free country, because it up- 
roots and eliminates the basis of all republican insti- 
tutions — that governments derive their just powers 
from the consent of the governed. 

I know not what may be done with the glamour of 
foreign conquest and the greed of the commercial and 
money-making classes in this country. For myself, I 
would rather quit public life, and would be willing to 
risk life itself, rather than give my consent to this fan- 
tastic and wicked attempt to revolutionize our Gov- 
ernment and substitute the principles of our heredi- 
tary enemies for the teachings of Washington and his 
associates. 



THE STRENGTH OF THE PEOPLE. 

GUY CARLETON LEE 

Lawyer, lecturer, and publicist, of Baltimore, Md. 

[Excerpt from a lecture delivered upon various occasions.] 

There is a public opinion which demands the aboli- 
tion of exclusive franchises and special privileges. 
There is a public opinion that demands, that insists, 
that natural monopolies shall be for the benefit, not 



Guy Carteton Lee 117 

of a class, but of the whole people. There is a public 
opinion that calls loudly for honest and straightfor- 
ward dealing in business affairs. 

Do not, however, confuse public opinion with pub- 
lic feeling. Perhaps the difference has never come 
home to you. Public feeling is the clamor of 
emotion, the plaint of sentimentality, the froth of 
the current — not the current itself. Public opinion, 
on the other hand, is the public mind expressing itself. 
It is intellectual and not sentimental. It grows out 
of study, knowledge, experience. Public feeling 
weeps, bawls, sometimes from good cause, but not 
always. Public opinion demands reform and is pre- 
pared to enforce it. Public feeling, however, is use- 
ful; for example, by it the muck-rakers have been 
supported. But it is only the scream of the whistle. 
Public opinion is the real movement of the engine of 
popular force. The difference between the two is 
the difference between abuse and criticism, between 
excited talk and effective action. Public feeling is 
too often created by selfish motives. It is too often 
the result of personal dislike or personal favor. If 
a man's ox is gored, loud does he cry for justice; but 
if it is his ox that does the goring, you do not hear 
his voice. Indeed, the words of the reformer are 
too often judged to be right or wrong according to 
the listener's private interests in the matter. The in- 
fluence of selfishness upon judgment is easily shown 
by a bit of history. A man and his wife had lived 
together — not always happily — for a long time ; now 
they had both come to extreme .old age, and the old 
man was dying in. one room, while the old woman — 
sick in the next room — was listening to the making 
of his last will and testament. 

"Now tell me exactly what is owing you," the 
lawyer said. 

"Timothy Brown owes me three hundred dollars," 



118 Oratory of the South 

answered the old man; "Casey owes me one hundred 
and seventy-five, and " 

"Good! good!" exclaimed the prospective widow; 
"rational to the last!" 

"Luke Brown owes me eighty dollars," continued 
the old man. 

"How clear his mind is," again assented the wife. 

"To Mike Lafferty I owe three hundred and 
seventy-five dollars." 

"Ah," interrupted the old woman, "hear him 
rave!" 

"Hear him rave!" But public opinion cannot ac- 
complish the reform of existing conditions unless the 
strength of the people puts theory into practice and 
makes righteous intention substantial result. 

What is this strength of the people upon which 
we have laid such stress ? To me it has always been 
the right living that produces right thinking. But it 
is the fashion to-day to speak of degenerate Ameri- 
cans. Certain men who claim to speak with authority 
assert that we are no longer able to distinguish evil 
from good, or to conquer it if by accident we recog- 
nize it. These Jeremiahs say: "American vitality 
is a thing of the past ; the American of to-day works 
too hard — in spells ; he eats too much ; he drinks too 
much; he sleeps too little." If this statement is true 
at all, it applies to but a very small number of our 
people. 

On the country farms, in the little villages and 
small towns, and even in the big cities, there are 
thousands upon thousands of men who neither work 
too much, eat too much, drink too much, nor sleep 
too little. In a word, they lead the normal lives 
their forebears led before them. These men are the 
bone and sinew of the country — the wealth producers, 
not the wealth accumulators nor the wealth spend- 
thrifts. Nor are they spendthrifts of their own 



Leon Harrison 119 

vitality. They have learned that work performed 
in the right manner and at the right hours never killed 
any man. They have not gone searching after 
strange devices in the way of foods. They have not 
burned up their internal organs with strong drink. 
They have not destroyed their nerve force by not 
taking the proper amount of sleep. To use a hack- 
neyed phrase, the bulk of American men and women 
lead the simple life, which translated means plain 
living and decent thinking. 



AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP AND THE 
AMERICAN JEW 

LEON HARRISON 

Rabbi of the Temple Israel, St. Louis, Mo. 

[An address delivered at the World's Fair grounds, St. 
Louis, upon the occasion of the observance of Thanksgiving 
Day, 1904.] 

A table is spread from the Atlantic to the Pacific 
this day, at which sit 70,000,000 people, rejoicing 
all of them, on this great national festival. Yea, the 
outcast, the pauper, the fallen, rejoicing also on this 
day, and saying in their hearts : "Thank God that I, 
too, am an American citizen." And thank God for 
that, say we all ; for to be an American means not only 
to be free, but to be worthy of freedom ; it means not 
only to rule the nation, but to rule our own spirit, to 
guard our own rights and the rights of every man. 
It means to love fair play, the "square deal," to honor 
not overmuch European nobility, but American 
ability; to feel that the bigness of our country is an 
accident, but the greatness of our country an achieve- 
ment, our achievement. 

I am a Jew, indeed, and my Judaism is the breath 



120 Oratory of the South 

of my nostrils; yet for me, the chosen nation is my 
American nation; the land of promise is this heaven- 
blessed land; yea, "thy people shall be my people," 
cries the American Jew. "Where thou goest, I will 
go; where thou diest, I will die, and there will I be 
buried." I cannot forget that the first sailor to tread 
American soil was a Jewish sailor in the crew of 
Columbus, that the first white baby born in Georgia 
was a Jewish baby. I cannot forget the Jewish 
soldiers in the French and Indian War, in the Revolu- 
tionary War, the eight thousand Jew soldiers in the 
Civil War, who poured out their blood like water in 
defense of our American liberties. I say, with re- 
doubled fervor, thank God that I am an American 
citizen. 

My boast is not that I belong simply to a nation on 
which the heavens rain gold; a nation of mountainous 
wealth, of superabundant harvests, of products un- 
rivaled in richness and diversity. For our chief 
product, our incomparable product, is men; men of 
intelligence, courage, patriotism, persistence, love of 
justice and the public good. I cannot forget that in 
the. providence of God we are represented in govern- 
ment by such a man, and 1 am thankful, as an Ameri- 
can, that our finest ideals of patriotism, intelligence, 
culture, manliness, are represented by a soldier, a 
scholar, a statesman, a strenuous American, with 
equal enthusiasm commending the "simple life" and 
the family life, believing alike in the life full and the 
mind full. I am thankful for the splendid manhood 
and example of an American President — Theodore 
Roosevelt. 

On this point, my friends, the center of a fairyland 
beyond the wildest dreams of imagination, our cup 
of patriotism is filled to overflowing. In this magic 
precinct the world is condensed into a neighborhood; 
all history is summarized; all modern science and pro- 



Leon Harrison 121 

gress are flashed upon the retina in one dazzling 
picture. In appreciating this glorious, this trans- 
cendent opportunity shall we not be grateful also to 
the instrument of the Almighty on this great Thanks- 
giving Day, to the toilers in this cause, the gener- 
ous contributors to this end, the gifted artists, the 
scholars, the scientists, the foreign commissioners, 
and, above all, to our own men whose energy and 
ability created this cosmic dream, the tireless directors 
of the great Exposition and their brilliant and inde- 
fatigable chief? 

The age of miracles, indeed, has not ceased, if I 
can recount our causes of patriotic exultation, of local 
pride, of World's Fair thankfulness in my allotted 
time of fifteen minutes. 

I thank God that I am an American, because here 
the common equipment is manhood, the highest goal 
is possible to all, the career is open to talent, there is 
no patrician and no plebeian, no partiality and no pre- 
judice, but every man may work out to its finish the 
best there is in him. 

And I am thankful for the little red schoolhouse 
and the discipline ; for the public schools, that mean 
to all assimilation, Americanization, patriotism, on a 
level, and for their intelligent, faithful teachers I am 
thankful — paid, perhaps, a little less than our coach- 
men and our cooks, but in time to be honored as the 
guardians and propagators of what is best in our 
American traditions and our mission for the world. 
Our children will learn from them that in the prov- 
idence of God we will fulfill our holy function to 
mankind and proclaim "liberty to the world and to 
all the inhabitants thereof," though some may doubt 
and shake the head. 

What though we have political infirmities and frail- 
ties, municipal measles, trivial to the young, though 
fatal to the old; what matters it that we make haste 



122 Oratory of the South 

slowly, with barnacles corroding and parasitical im- 
peding our ship of state, shall we lose heart when 
we remember the weary forty years of Israel in the 
wilderness, when a few weeks were sufficient for the 
journey, yet forty years there were to learn the nec- 
essary lessons of self-government, or that those 
might die that could not learn them? Yes, the route 
was circuitous; roundabout must the road be ever 
that is to lead to freedom, and to train and equip 
men for the blessings of freedom, so that they are 
fitted for the stupendous task, and that all errors 
and frailties may be sloughed off and the sins of 
youth depart with youth, and the fullness of maturity 
come in with the end of a blundering apprenticeship, 
and its fruition in ripened experience and wisdom. 

Let us thank the King of Kings that we are politi- 
cally convalescent; that a better day has begun ; that 
in politics actual honesty is the best policy, and that 
in State, city, and nation we are beginning to care 
deeply for the best and finest ideals of American pub- 
lic spirit, integrity, and inflexible conviction. 

And, above all, I rejoice and am thankful to God 
that here conscience is free, the soul is not gagged and 
fettered, but every faith and creed is equal before the 
law. It is no small thing that in this great land both 
Catholic and Protestant realize that they are Chris- 
tians, and remember the words, "By this shall all men 
know that ye are my disciples, that ye love one an- 
other." It is no small thing that on this free soil the 
Christian and the Jew remember that they are alike 
human, alike revering the sacred Scriptures and the 
universal God, alike laboring for peace, righteous- 
ness, justice, and brotherhood. 

We have on this platform the leading representa- 
tives of Protestantism and Catholicism, the lion and 
the lamb, and yet the lamb is not inside the lion. 
There was a time when these two bodies contended to 



James Gibbons 123 

rend each other asunder, and when they fought no 
longer among themselves, both pounced down upon 
the guileless Jew. But this is changed, in this coun- 
try at least. 

And for all this I thank God. For our common 
country I rejoice before Heaven. For its manhood 
and intelligence and tolerance and rugged strength 
and integrity I am grateful. In its assembled in- 
signia, stars for the brave and stripes for the base; 
the blue of heaven its hue of hope eternal; the red 
of blood poured out in battle its type of patriotic 
valor and sacrifice; its white for stainless honor, for 
American integrity and truth, and from this em- 
blazoned field the stars are shining of undimmed faith 
and hope and cheer in darkest night for all the world. 

As you depart, remember this sacred flag. Re- 
member the mercies of God in gratitude, in renewed 
love of country, in a larger bounty, in a warmer love 
for the friendliness and for the stranger that is within 
thy gates. Amen. 



TRUTH AND SINCERITY OF 
CHARACTER 

JAMES GIBBONS 

Roman Catholic Cardinal, of Baltimore, Md. 

[Extract from a sermon preached in Baltimore, 1896.] 

The highest compliment that can be bestowed on 
a man is, to say of him that he is a man of his word; 
and the greatest reproach that? can be cast on an in- 
dividual is, to assert that he has no regard for the 
virtue of veracity. Truth is the golden coin with 
God's image stamped upon it, that circulates among 
men of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues ; 
its standard value never changes nor depreciates. 



124 Oratory of the South 

"Truth has such a face and such a mien, 
As to be loved, needs only to be seen." 

Like all valuable commodities, truth is often coun- 
terfeited. If it is a crime to counterfeit money, it 
is a greater crime to adulterate virtue. The more 
precious the genuine coin, the more criminal and dan- 
gerous is the spurious imitation ; and as truth is more 
valuable than specie, its base resemblance is more 
iniquitous and detestable. 

As truth is the medium of social and commercial 
intercourse, so high is the value which civilized so- 
ciety sets upon it, that, for its own protection, it metes 
out the severest punishment to anyone who violates 
it in commercial transactions. Some time ago a 
citizen, who had boasted of owning more property 
than any other person in the neighborhood of a large 
city, was afterward sent to the penitentiary for tell- 
ing a lie on a scrap of paper, or for forging another 
man's name on a note. 

The virtue of veracity is so indispensable an ele- 
ment in the composition of a Christian gentleman that 
neither splendid talents, nor engaging manners, nor 
benevolence of disposition, nor self-denial, nor all 
these qualities combined, nor even the practice of 
religious exercises, can atone for its absence. They 
all become vitiated, they lose their savor, if the salt 
of truth and sincerity is wanting. 

The vice of lying and hypocrisy is so odious and 
repulsive that it is obliged to hide its deformity and 
clothe itself in the garment of truth. 

While we feel at our ease and are disposed to be 
open and communicative in the presence of an upright 
and candid man, we are instinctively reserved and 
guarded before a deceitful person. He diffuses 
around him an atmosphere of distrust, and we shun 
him as we would a poisonous reptile. "There is no 



James Gibbons 125 

vice," says Bacon, "that so covereth a man with 
shame as to be false and perfidious." 

So damaging and infamous in public estimation is 
the imputation of falsehood that, when we charge a 
man with unveracity, we rarely go so far as to call 
him a liar to his face ; but we tell him in less offensive 
language that he has a vivid imagination, that his 
memory is defective, or that he has been betrayed into 
an error of judgment. 

All men, Pagans and Jews, as well as Christians, 
pay homage to truth. They all profess to worship 
at her shrine. Pagan Rome supplies us with noble 
examples of fidelity to truth even at the sacrifice of 
life. When Regulus was sent from Carthage to 
Rome with ambassadors to sue for peace, it was under 
the condition that he should return to his Cartha- 
ginian prison if peace was not proclaimed. When 
he arrived in Rome he implored the Senate to con- 
tinue the war, and not to agree to the exchange of 
prisoners. That implied his own return to captivity 
at Carthage. The Senators and the chief priest held 
that, as his oath had been extorted by force, he was 
not bound by it. "I am not ignorant," replied Re- 
gulus, "that tortures and death await me; but what 
are these to the shame of an infamous action or the 
wounds of a guilty mind? Slave as I am to Carthage, 
I have still the spirit of a Roman. I have sworn to 
return. It is my duty to go." Regulus returned to 
Carthage, and, it is said, was tortured to death. 

If there is one virtue more clear than another on 
the pages of the New Testament, if there is one virtue 
for which Christ and his disciples were eminently 
conspicuous in their public and private life, it is the 
virtue of truth, candor, ingenuousness, and simplicity 
of character; and if there is any vice more particu- 
larly detested by them, it is hypocrisy, cunning, and 
duplicity of conduct. 



126 Oratory of the South 

So great is our Saviour's reverence for truth, so 
great His aversion for falsehood, that He calls Him- 
self "the way, the truth, and the life." Even His 
enemies could not withhold their admiration for His 
truthfulness and sincerity. "Master," they said, "we 
know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God 
in truth; neither carest thou for any one; for thou 
does not regard the person of men." 

"Let your speech," says our Lord, "be yea, yea, 
nay, nay," as if He would say: Let your conversation 
be always frank and direct, free from the tinsel of em- 
bellishment and exaggeration, divested of studied am- 
biguity with intent to deceive. Christ is the martyr 
of truth as well as of charity. Caiaphas said of Him : 
"I adjure thee by the living God that thou tell us 
whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God." How 
easily could Jesus have saved His life on this occasion 
by His silence or by an evasive answer! But by 
openly avowing that He was the Christ, He signed 
His own death-warrant. 

There was one class of persons toward whom our 
Lord was unsparing in His reprobation, and these 
were the scribes and Pharisees. He calls them a gen- 
eration of vipers. "Wo to you, scribes and Pharisees, 
hypocrites," he says, "because ye make clean the out- 
side of the cup and of the dish : but within you are 
full of rapine and uncleanliness ... Ye are like to 
whited sepulchers, which outwardly appear to men 
beautiful, but within are full of dead men's bones and 
of all filthiness. So you also outwardly indeed ap- 
pear to men just, but inwardly you are full of hypoc- 
risy and iniquity." His language toward them is 
a scathing denunciation of their insincerity, selfishness, 
and perversion of the truth. We may judge how 
odious is deceit in His eyes when He says to the 
Pharisees: "Again I say to you that the publicans 



James Gibbons 127 

and the harlots shall go into the kingdom of God be- 
fore you." 

St. Paul says: "Putting away lying, speak ye the 
truth every man with his neighbour, for we are mem- 
bers one of another." There is so absolute a trust 
and confidence between the members of the human 
body that, when the heart, or hand, or foot suffers 
pain, the head never suspects the afflicted member of 
practicing deception. The same trustworthiness that 
subsists among our physical members should extend, 
also, to the domestic, collegiate, and social body. 
Without this mutual confidence there could be no 
official nor friendly relations among men, and the 
wheels of social intercourse and commercial commu- 
nication would suddenly stop. Nearly all the in- 
formation that we acquire is obtained from the testi- 
mony of others. Although we may at times be im- 
posed upon, we have an instinctive faith in the 
veracity of our fellow-beings. 

One may be guilty of falsehood in many ways. 
He may lie by telling a half-truth, omitting a cir- 
cumstance essential to the fidelity of the narrative. 
He may lie by a shrug of the shoulders, by a gesture, 
by a deceitful silence, or by palming off in class as 
his own production the fruit of another's brain: for 
the essence of a falsehood consists in the intention to 
deceive. His life may be a colossal lie by being false 
to his profession or calling, appearing to be rich in 
grace and good works in the sight of men, but being 
poor and blind and miserable in the sight of God. 
There are others who have a habit of exaggerating 
from a morbid desire of imparting a relish to the 
conversation, and of attracting the attention of their 
hearers. The incidents they describe are usually of 
a startling and phenomenal nature, and their adven- 
turous experiences have the flavor of a Gulliver or a 
Baron Munchausen. 



128 Oratory of the South 

The pernicious habit of retailing jocose lies and 
sensational stories, of making inaccurate statements, 
and of talking at random without weighing his words, 
will impair the offender's reputation for veraciousness 
in grave matters and expose him to the penalty of 
not being believed even when he tells the truth. He 
will be an illustration of the boy in the fable who 
had repeatedly given false alarms about the approach 
of the wolf; but when the wolf had actually invaded 
the fold his outcry remained unheeded. 

The two chief causes that lead men to prevaricate 
are prejudice against their neighbor and inordinate 
self-love. Prejudice warps our judgment and jaun- 
dices our mind, so that we view in an unfavorable 
light our neighbor's words and actions. Self-love 
and vanity prompt us to exaggerate our good deeds, 
and to underrate or palliate our own shortcomings. 

Charity and humility are the guardians of truth. 
They are the two angels that defend the temple of 
the soul against the approach of the demon of false- 
hood. Charity counsels us not to judge our neighbor 
unjustly or to magnify his defects; and humility in- 
spires us not to extenuate our own. 

If we cannot be martyrs, let us be confessors of 
the truth. If we have not the courage, like our Mas- 
ter, to endure death for its sake, we should at least 
be prepared to suffer for it some passing humiliation 
or confusion. 

Let it be the aim of your life to be always frank 
and open, candid, sincere, and ingenuous in your re- 
lations with your fellow-man. Set your face against 
all deceit and duplicity, all guile, hypocrisy, and dis- 
simulation. You will thus be living up to the maxims 
of the Gospel, you will prove yourself a genuine 
disciple of the God of truth, you will commend your- 
self to all honest men. You will triumph over those 
that lie in wait to deceive, for the intriguer is usually 
caught in his own toils. 



Augustus O. Bacou 129 

THE CASE OF SENATOR REED SMOOT, 
OF UTAH 

AUGUSTUS O. BACON 

United States Senator from Georgia 

[Condensed from a speech delivered in the Senate, Feb- 
ruary 20, 1907.] 

Mr. President: 

For the first time during my service in the Senate 
I am called upon by my vote to pass on the question 
whether one holding a seat as a Senator here shall 
be excluded from this body. Several reasons are 
assigned why Senator Smoot should be excluded from 
the Senate. In a matter of so great gravity it is due 
to myself that I should state the grounds on which 
I shall base my vote in this case. 

The fact that Senator Smoot is a Mormon and be- 
lieves in the tenets and dogmas of the Mormon 
Church will not, in my opinion, justify his exclusion 
from the Senate. It would be an extremely danger- 
ous precedent to exclude a Senator because of his re- 
ligious or political belief, however erroneous we may 
believe that belief to be. 

There are other alleged grounds upon which it is 
claimed that he should be excluded. In some of 
these there are issues and conflicting contentions as to 
the facts, and differences in the construction proper to 
be placed upon acts alleged to have been done. These 
I pass by because of such conflicting contentions and 
of such uncertainty of facts and of construction. 
There is,. however, one fact upon which there is no 
issue, because the fact is avowed by Senator Smoot 
himself. 

He is not a polygamist. That is conceded, and is 
to his credit. He is, however, an apostle, one of the 
governing body of the church, empowered to give 



130 Oratory of the South 

spiritual and temporal law and precept to its fol- 
lowers. It is conceded that he is and has been for 
years, both before and since his election to the Senate, 
in intimate official relationship and official coopera- 
tion and necessary official approval with other mem 
bers of the governing officials of the church who have 
been, during all the time and still are, while such 
officials, in the open, notorious, defiant, and even boast- 
ful violation of law in living in undisguised, undis- 
puted polygamous cohabitation. More than this, by 
his own avowal, while such official, as an apostle, he 
has voted to place in the highest office of the church 
Joseph F. Smith, who was at the time of his election, 
as he was before and has ever since continued to be, 
in the open, notorious, and defiant violation of law in 
living in undisguised, undisputed polygamous cohabi- 
tation; and in thus indorsing and continuing to the 
present time to support him as their head and chief, 
Senator Smoot has, during all these years, in the most 
pronounced and indisputable manner, held forth this 
violator and profaner of the law as one worthy to 
be by the people commended and approved as their 
fit teacher and exemplar. 

I do not undertake to argue the correctness of my 
conclusion. I only state it in order that it may be 
known on what ground my vote will be based. 

Mr. President, after the most careful consideration, 
having regard to the gravity of the interests involved, 
I have reached the conclusion that Senator Smoot, in 
the language of the protestants, ought not to be per- 
mitted to sit as a member of the United States Senate 
for reasons affecting the honor and dignity of the 
United States and their Senators in Congress, and 
upon the grounds and for the reason that he is one 
of a self-perpetuating body of fifteen men who, con- 
stituting the ruling authorities of the Church of Jesus 
Christ of Latter Day Saints, or Mormon Church, 



William J. Stone 131 

claim, and by their followers are accorded the right 
to claim, supreme authority, divinely sanctioned, to 
shape the belief and control the conduct of those un- 
der them in all matters whatsoever, civil and religious, 
temporal and spiritual, and who, thus uniting in them- 
selves authority in church and state, do so exercise the 
same as to inclucate and encourage a belief in polyg- 
amy and polygamous cohabitation; who countenance 
and connive at violations of the laws of the State 
prohibiting the same, regardless of pledges made for 
the purpose of obtaining statehood and of covenants 
made with the people of the United States, and who, 
by all means in their power, protect and honor those 
who in themselves violate the laws of the land and 
are guilty of practices destructive of the family and 
the home. 



RECONSTRUCTION IN MISSOURI 

WILLIAM J. STONE 

United States Senator from Missouri 

[In 1892 Senator Stone was the Democratic candidate 
for Governor of Missouri. His opponent was his present 
colleague in the Senate, William Warner, who, as the Re- 
publican nominee, opened his campaign at Sedalia with a 
speech in which he pictured what he termed "the New Mis- 
souri" which would follow a Republican victory; defended 
the Republican regime in Missouri and assailed the 
twenty years of Democratic rule. Mr. Stone, at a mon- 
ster mass meeting in St. Louis, in the course of what was 
perhaps the most notable speech in his career, made answer 
to Major Warner. The following" extracts cover a por- 
tion of Mr. Stone's speech in which he depicted the terrors 
of reconstruction days in Missouri.] 

I have read* Major Warner's recent fulmination 
at Sedalia. He abounds in vague rhetorical flour- 
ishes about a "New Missouri" — a wide open, pro- 



132 Oratory of the South 

gressive Missouri. He speaks of it in glittering 
metaphor, as Francis Orellana describes his shining 
terra incognita, the fabulous El Dorado of the olden 
time. How he is to transport us into the promised 
land flowing with the traditional milk and honey 
he does not condescend to advise us. He does, in- 
deed, declare a sanguinary purpose, firm fixed and 
irrevocable, to strike off not one, but all the heads 
of that mythical hydra he calls Bourbonism, what- 
ever that may be. But beyond this butcher's act of 
bloody decapitation he does not deign to unfold to 
curious and vulgar eyes his great designs. He out- 
lines no purpose, indicates no policy, he develops no 
system. He swears there shall be a revelation some 
day or some other day, and that in all due time he 
will press his Aladdin's ring and summon to his aid 
some occult influence, some supernal energy, some 
mighty, invisible force, which under his august com- 
mand will bear the State up bodily into the celestial 
regions, where all of us, rich and poor, black and 
white, enraptured and in love, can lie down in cool 
and shady places by purling brooks, henceforth for- 
ever to watch the butterfly sip honey from the rose 
and listen to the melody of sweet-throated birds flit- 
ting among the green, rustling banners in the tree- 
tops. He promises that all this, in due course of 
his providence, moving mysteriously to perform, 
shall come to a full fruition. We must not be in- 
quisitive, we must only be patient and trustful and 
follow him. The millennium will begin when Major 
Warner strikes down this "Bourbon Democracy," 
plants his foot upon its throat and extirpates it. 
Have patience, I pray you. 

But the gallant Major does more than to paint 
rosy pictures on the horizon of the future. He is 
not only prophetic, he is reminiscent. His utter- 
ances are not only oracular, they are historical. He 



William J. Stone 133 

discourses of the past as well as of the future. His 
speech is not only a promise of what his party would 
do, it is likewise a eulogy of what it has done. He in- 
vokes the past. He indulges in comparisons. He 
lauds the Republican party and inveighs against 
the Democracy. He approves, applauds, glorifies the 
achievements' of radicalism in Missouri during the 
last twenty-five or thirty years, in all of which he bore 
a conspicuous part. Figures he juggles with, facts 
he perverts and evades, and with superb audacity 
declares the period of Republican triumph, from 
1865 to 1 87 1, to have been the golden era in Mis- 
souri. Sir, I was amazed when I saw Major Warner 
stand unblushing before the people of Missouri and 
pronounce his glowing panegyric on the achievements, 
the record, and history of his party in this State. I 
had expected to find him penitent and apologizing; 
instead, he stands forth defiant to applaud and de- 
fend. I had expected to find him excusing, extenuat- 
ing, palliating; instead he lifts the shadow from off 
the old radical days of proscription, fraud, and pub- 
lic debauchery, upon which we have been wont to 
look back with shuddering shame, and swears by all 
the gods at once they were the meridian days of 
Missouri's prosperity, pride, and glory. This in- 
deed was a daring and audacious thing for the 
doughty Major to do. 

And so it is history the Major invokes, and makes 
bold challenge for comparisons. Good, my noble 
lord, come with me now and you shall have history 
and comparisons to your dear heart's dismay. 

Let me call to Major Warner's elusive memory a 
chapter in the history of his party which will be 
familiar with him, for he towers high among those 
who were conspicuous in it. When the great civil 
war between the States was concluded, the ragged 
veterans of the Confederacy surrendered their swords 



134 Oratory of the South 

to the gallant armies of the Union under a pledge 
that they should return in peace to their homes and 
be again clothed in all the immunities, and enter 
again undisturbed upon the discharge of all the high 
duties, of citizenship. As a rule the real, non-political 
soldiers of the Federal army were always ready and 
willing to keep that pledge ; the politicians were not. 
But let that pass. I will not talk about the Con- 
federate soldiers. When they entered the army they 
took upon themselves the hazard of war.' If the 
politician spat upon the solemn pledge Grant and 
Sheridan, those great captains of the Federal armies, 
gave; if the Missouri Confederate, returning to his 
home, found, instead of peace and the prerogative of 
citizenship, a menacing danger lurking in every 
shadow and revengeful ostracism stalking in the open 
sunlight, he rarely ever complained. I shall not 
speak of him. The Confederate soldier may disap- 
pear. 

But Missouri was a border State, and the red- 
crested wave of war swept back and forth across her 
hills and plains. Sons parted from their fathers and 
brothers bade each other a long farewell and sep- 
arated. Families and kindred and friends were 
divided and torn apart to go their several ways. 
Union fathers had sons away in the Southland, with 
Price and Shelby. Confederate sons had fathers 
flashing their swords where the old flag waved. This 
is what the war brought to Missouri. 

Now, when this great struggle had ended, after the 
shadows had melted away, after sweet peace had 
come on her white wings, hovering over the land — 
after the war was over, the radical party, then trium- 
phant in Missouri, with a view to upholding its power 
and perpetuating its reign of plunder and debauchery, 
inaugurated a policy and a system of proscription and 
persecution which, for harsh brutality, stands with- 



William J. Stone 135 

out a parallel in the history of this country, and I 
believe without a precedent in the history of en- 
lightened nations. They inserted a clause in the 
Constitution of the State, and afterwards enacted 
registration laws and other statutes for its enforce- 
ment, which provided, among other things, that no 
man should exercise the right of suffrage, or hold 
any office of honor, profit, or trust — not even that of 
constable or city alderman; nor be permitted to act 
as a director in any corporation, public or private; 
nor practice his profession as an attorney at law; nor 
teach any school, either public or private; nor serve 
as a juror in any court of the State; nor hold prop- 
erty in trust for the benefit of any religious or chari- 
table body or society; nor should any person "be 
competent as a bishop, priest, deacon, minister, elder, 
or other clergyman of any religious persuasion, sect, 
or denomination, to teach or preach or solemnize 
marriages," if such person had ever at any time been 
in armed hostility to the United States or the State 
of Missouri; or had ever given aid, comfort, coun- 
tenance, or support to any person engaged in such 
hostility; or had ever in any manner contributed to 
the Confederate cause or sent into the Confederate 
lines any money, goods, letters, or information of 
any kind ; or who had ever by any act or word mani- 
fested any sympathy with those engaged in the Re- 
bellion ; or had ever knowing or willingly harbored, 
aided or countenanced any person engaged in maraud- 
ing in this State. I have not repeated the whole of 
these disqualifying provisions by any manner of 
means, but I have repeated enough of them. 

Before any man could exercise any of these great 
and inestimable privileges of citizenship, — before he 
could vote, teach, or preach, — he was required by the 
law to take a solemn oath that he had read the dis- 
qualifying clause of the Constitution, was perfectly 



136 Oratory of the South 

familiar with it, and that he had never done any of 
the things therein prohibited. If any person at- 
tempted to hold and exercise any of the "offices, posi- 
tions, trusts, professions, or functions" specified in 
the law, without first taking the oath, he subjected 
himself to a fine of not less than five hundred dollars 
and imprisonment in the county jail for a period of 
not less than six months; and if he falsely took the 
oath — that is, if it could be shown that he had done 
some of the prohibited things — he was declared 
guilty of perjury and subjected himself to indictment 
and imprisonment in the penitentiary for a term of 
not less than two years. 

Of course under the provisions of this barbarous 
and inquisitorial statute every ex-Confederate soldier 
was instantly excluded from any participation what- 
ever in the government of this State, county or mu- 
nicipality. But I said I would not complain on his 
account. He had slept in the bivouac, sung love 
songs on the march, and stormed with red-dripping 
blade on the open field. I do not complain for him. 
But if some old father, growing whiter about his 
temples with each passing day, bending lower under 
the weight of anxieties multiplying, did ever in the 
twilight about his hearthstone think of his boy walk- 
ing the lonely picket line somewhere in the Southland, 
with no company except the cold gleaming stars and 
no voice about him save the moaning wind, and, 
looking, saw the old wife and mother sitting silent 
there with a tear trembling on her cheek, and if he 
clasped her to his heart, knelt with her, and prayed 
with her to the good God to send some sweet angel 
with rustling wing to hover over their boy — for that 
crime that old man was dismantled of his citizenship. 

If when this Southern soldier boy went out from 
the old home to the battlefield he left behind him a 
gentle, sweet-faced sister, his kisses fresh upon her 



William J. Stone 137 

quivering lips, and that grim-visaged thing we call 
death had crept in among the shadows of the old lawn 
trees waving in the moonlight, and across the thresh- 
old, and stolen this sweet child from her mother's 
arms and borne her away; and if the old father had 
by some covert means sent a letter to his absent boy 
bearing the sad message of the blight at home — for 
that crime he was despoiled of the noblest prerogative 
of the citizen. 

If here in Missouri, where the contending armies 
surged back and forth, a father had met his boy and 
given to him some little trinket prepared by loving 
hands — had given him an apple plucked from the 
old orchard under whose flowering umbrage he had 
played in childhood — for that crime he stood dis- 
honored before the law. 

If some splendid, high-souled Missouri boy, proud 
of his uniform and bearing arms for the Union, had 
heard that his brother in his suit of faded gray was 
moaning and fretting his life away in some army hos- 
pital of the South, and he had found means to send 
him some message of love and something to tempt 
the fever away — for that crime he was disfranchised 
under the terms of the law. 

If some old man — I have one in mind — who had 
given all the years of his life to study and teaching, 
who loved his books and was proud of "his boys," 
many of whom had gone forth into the world 
equipped under his tutelage — if he had only thought 
of the soldier boys he had loved in the old days, and 
prayed for them or wept for -them — for that crime 
he was not only disfranchised, but the doors of his 
schoolroom were closed and he forbidden to follow 
his profession. 

"You take my life 
When you do take the means whereby I live." 



138 Oratory of the South 

But worse than any of these — than all of these, 
perhaps — if some old father of the holy faith, his 
thin locks white with long years of saintly life, had 
stopped by the wayside to do some Southern warrior 
a kindness for sweet charity's sake — to give him shel- 
ter, or food, or drink — for that he was forbidden 
ever again to lift his voice for the Master either in 
warning or exhortation; forbidden to appeal ever 
again to men for a higher and purer and nobler life, 
or to point them along the pathway mounting to the 
stars. 

For all these I do speak to-day. Their wrongs 
come back to haunt and accuse that old intolerant 
radicalism which in the day of its power made love 
a crime and justice a mockery. Do you think I 
exaggerate? Every man who lived in Missouri 
twenty years ago, and was familiar with the Drake 
Constitution and the force bills enacted under it, 
knows I speak with moderation. 

I have not been reciting ancient history nor foreign 
history; it is both modern and domestic. It is not 
of Poland's sad, pathetic story I have been speaking. 
These are not sorrows that have come sobbing out 
of the midnight which has hung starless for seven 
hundred years over the Emerald Isle. These are 
not stories borne on the shivering winds blown down 
from that mighty despotism in northern Europe, where 
men are hunted like wild beasts and driven like cattle 
into hopeless exile. I have been telling you simply 
of what occurred here in Missouri only twenty years 
ago when the Republican party was triumphant in 
this State, and when the laws it put upon the statute 
books were being enforced by the officers of its own 
choosing. I have been speaking of the same period 
in our own history to which Major Warner referred, 
and of the same political party whose achievements 
Major Warner applauded. I thought, since the 



Charles E. Fenner 139 

Major had invited comparison and indulged in his- 
torical reminiscence, the young men of the State 
should know something more of the past than he 
seemed disposed to give them. I thought I would 
simply tear the veil away and let all the ghastly 
skeletons out. 



JUSTICE TO JEFFERSON DAVIS 

CHARLES E. FENNER 

Of the New Orleans (La.) Bar 

[The concluding part of an oration on the Life and Ser- 
vices of Jefferson Davis, delivered before the Memorial 
Association of New Orleans, June 3, 1901. Judge Fenner 
was the lifelong friend of Jefferson Davis, and at the for- 
mer's home the lamented chieftan of the Confederacy 
breathed his last.] 

The treatment of which Jefferson Davis was made 
the victim after his capture is a chapter which all 
good men would like to see blotted from the history 
of the Republic. Something is to be forgiven to the 
intensity of excitement and resentment which pre- 
vailed at that time. Let us cast the mantle of chari- 
table silence over the indignities, humiliations, and 
unnecessary cruelties which for many months were 
visited upon a sick, helpless, and defenseless prisoner. 
The memory of them can serve no purpose except to 
illustrate the heroic fortitude and undaunted spirit of 
their victim. 

But there were other injuries far worse than any 
mere physical tortures, which justice demands should 
not be left unnoticed. All the efforts of the powers 
that were to "make treason odious" were concentrated 
upon the defenseless head of Jefferson Davis. The 
flood-gates of slander and obloquy were opened wide 
upon him. His character was distorted and vilified; 



140 Oratory of the South 

he was painted as a monster of cruelty and cowardice, 
a vile conspirator who plotted the ruin of his country 
and deluged a continent in blood, with no better 
motive than to gratify a criminal ambition and to 
advance his personal interests. He was charged with 
being the instigator and abettor of the murder of Mr. 
Lincoln with all the malignity, but without the 
courage, of the actual assassin. He was accused of 
intentional and inhuman cruelty to defenseless prison- 
ers. He was charged with having basely rifled the 
treasure chests of the Confederacy, and appropriating 
them to his private emolument. 

All who knew Mr. Davis, all who will take the 
slightest pains to study the ample record of his life 
and character, must view such charges with peculiar 
horror and indignation. 

Jefferson Davis undoubtedly had his faults, as who 
has not; but they were the faults of an open and 
generous nature. He had strong friendships and 
violent prejudices for individuals. He was, perhaps, 
too blind to the shortcomings of his friends and too 
intolerant to those of his enemies. But whatever 
may be said of him, he was, from top to toe, a gentle- 
man, in the highest acceptation of that word. He 
had a fine and delicate sense of honor, which resented 
the slightest stain upon it, as he would a blow in the 
face. He had a chivalric courage, written in his 
martial bearing, and in his aquiline and defiant coun- 
tenance, which shirked no conflict, but which always 
fought in the open, and scorned all indirect or un- 
derhand advantage. He had, as is common with 
men of that type, a romantic tenderness for the weak 
and the dependent, as illustrated by the exquisite and 
inimitable courtesy and deference of his bearing 
toward women, by his delight in the society of chil- 
dren, and by his gentle, just, and humane treatment 
of his numerous slaves, whose respect and allegiance 



Charles E. Fenner 141 

stood unshaken even after they became free. His 
whole public life was pitched on the highest plane of 
devotion to duty and of inflexible adherence to prin- 
ciple. It was, perhaps, his defect as a statesman that 
he scorned too much the politician's art, and shrunk 
too sensitively from everything which involved a 
sacrifice of principle to expediency. In private life 
he was a man whose word was ever his bond, scru- 
pulously faithful to every engagement, sensitively re- 
gardful of his obligations and the rights of others, 
with a lofty contempt of all sordid considerations. 

Such was the man against whom an angry and 
resentful government fulminated charges of the most 
despicable and cowardly crimes, and upon whom it 
set "all the little dogs, Tray, Blanche, and Sweet- 
heart," to worry at his heels, and with the teeth of 
their envenomed slander to tear to shreds the fair 
mantle of his unblemished reputation. The helpless 
prisoner, though subjected to the anguish of knowing 
of these wanton assaults, was kept with closed mouth, 
forbidden to utter a word in his own defense. He 
bore them with lofty contempt, and with a philosophy 
springing from his serene confidence that soon or late 
triumphant truth would vindicate his name. 

The time came when the sleeping public conscience 
was aroused to a sense of the rank injustice of hold- 
ing in imprisonment a man charged with such heinous 
crimes, not only without a trial, but without even an 
indictment or arraignment at the bar of justice. 
Such men as Horace Greely, Gerritt Smith, John A. 
Andrews, and others of the men who had been his bit- 
terest political foes took up his case and determined 
that justice should be done. They investigated 
the pretended evidence on which it was claimed that 
he was implicated in the odious crimes with which he 
had been charged. They convinced themselves, and 
openly proclaimed to the world their conviction, that 



142 Oratory of the South 

there was not the slightest ground for such charges. 
Even Thaddeus Stephens, who would no doubt gladly 
have seen Jefferson Davis hanged for high treason, 
did not hesitate his confidence that he was innocent 
of all the other charges, saying that he knew Jefferson 
Davis, and that, whatever else might be said of him, 
he was a gentleman incapable of such crimes. There 
was not even a pretense of persistence in those charges. 
They were absolutely abandoned. He was indicted 
for treason, a purely political crime. He was liber- 
ated from imprisonment on a bond signed by Horace 
Greeley, Gerritt Smith, and Commodore Vanderbilt. 
The government never ventured to press the case to 
trial. At the ensuing term of court a nolle prosequi 
was entered, and Jefferson Davis passed a free man 
into the body of his fellow-citizens. 

But, although thus completely vindicated, the filthy 
streams of slander and abuse, which so long flowed 
unrestrained over his fair name and fame, were not 
turned aside without leaving their foul slime behind 
them. Jefferson Davis had come to be regarded by 
the mass of the Northern people as what they called 
the "arch traitor" ; the "raw head and bloody bones" 
of wicked rebellion; the man responsible to widows 
for their slaughtered husbands, to orphans for their 
lost fathers, to parents for murdered sons — the very 
embodiment of hate and evil and bloody crime. 
Even when the returning tide of reason and justice 
began to flow, when juster and more rational views of 
the war and of the participants began to prevail, 
when the long silent chords of fraternity began to 
vibrate with the music of renewed love and generosity, 
swelling into a louder anthem, until it drowned the 
insensate shrieks of hate and discord, — even then Jef- 
ferson Davis was still left in solitary exclusion from 
the abundant bounty of mutual charity and forgive- 
ness. Like a red flag shaken in the face of an angry 



Charles E. Fenner 143 

bull, the mention of his name still remained a note 
of discord, which aroused anew the almost forgotten 
frenzy of the past. Even the Southern people, with 
all their courage, almost learned to speak his name 
with bated breath, and to confine within the private 
recesses of their own hearts the unbounded sympathy, 
love, and admiration which they felt for their un- 
daunted leader, who had been made the vicarious 
sufferer for faults, if faults they were, which he only 
shared in common with each and every one of them, 
and who bore the whole burden of which they had 
been relieved with such eager gladness in their re- 
lief and with such unflinching fortitude. 

There was a time when the people of the Southern 
States had the same feeling toward Abraham Lin- 
coln which the Northern people entertained toward 
Jefferson Davis, and which still lingers in the minds 
of many of them. But how completely have those 
sentiments, in the case of Lincoln, passed away and 
been forgotten! 

Justice is the most persistent and irrepressible of 
human voices. It may be smothered for a time by 
passion and prejudice, it may be temporarily drowned 
by the uproar of calumny and denunciation; but it 
still clamors for hearing, and the time surely comes 
when it must and will be heard. It took more than 
a century and a half to bring the people of England 
to the point of doing justice to Oliver Cromwell. We 
live faster in these days. More than a generation has 
passed since the Confederate flag was folded to its 
eternal rest. Death, the great leveler which sum- 
mons each of us in his turn to the bar of judgment, 
and from whose dread presence malice and all un- 
charitableness shrink rebuked, has long since laid his 
icy fingers on all that was mortal of Jefferson Davis. 
Has not the time arrived for justice to his memory? 

With heart overflowing with patriotic devotion to 



144 Oratory of the South 

our common country, keenly responsive to the spirit 
of love and fraternity which has grown up between 
all sections of our people, devoutly thankful to that 
divine Providence which has so guided the hearts of 
men and shaped the current of events that out of the 
wreck and ruin of desperate conflict we have saved 
the essential principles of constitutional liberty and 
of equal rights of citizenship, and have re-established 
foundations on which, if faithfully guarded and pre- 
served, the glorious destinies of the American repub- 
lic may be triumphantly accomplished, — I stand here 
to-day to claim that justice from the whole people of 
our country, North as well as South, — justice, only 
justice, — justice to the memory of a man who illus- 
trated the history of two nations by valor in battle, 
wisdom in counsel, eloquence in debate, temperance 
in triumph, and inexpugnable fortitude in adversity — 
justice to the memory of a man who, when the mists 
of passion and prejudice shall have passed away, his- 
tory must undoubtedly rank as one of the greatest 
Americans. 

I cannot close this appeal more appropriately or 
enforce it more strongly than by quoting the conclud- 
ing paragraph of his great work on "The Rise and 
Fall of the Confederate Government," which was 
his historical and political testament to his people: 

"In asserting the right of secession, it has not been 
my wish to incite to its exercise. I recognize the fact 
that the war showed it to be impracticable, but this 
did not prove it to be wrong, and now that it may 
not be again attempted, and that the Union may pro- 
mote the general welfare, it is needful that the truth, 
the whole truth, should be known, so that crimination 
and recrimination should forever cease, and then, on 
the basis of fraternity and faithful regard for the 
rights of the States, there may be written on the arch 
of the Union, Esto Perpetua" 



Bennett H. Young 145 

TRIBUTE TO WINNIE DAVIS 

BENNETT H. YOUNG 

Of the Louisville (Ky.) Bar; editor of "Kentucky Elo- 
quence" from which this section is taken 

[Condensed from a eulogy delivered before the United 
Confederate Veterans' Association, at Charleston, S. C, 
May ii, 1899.] 

The most distinguished divine of the seventeenth 
century, when preaching the funeral sermon of Louis 
XIV, the greatest of all French rulers, as he gazed 
upon the deceased king, cold, pallid, powerless, ex- 
pressionless, lifted his hands to heaven and, with tears 
streaming down his cheeks, exclaimed: "There is 
nothing great but God." And, comrades, as we re- 
call the beautiful, beloved, and winsome face and 
form of "The Daughter of the Confederacy," as she 
stood in our presence less than a year ago at Atlanta, 
and with joy and pride received anew our knightly ad- 
miration and fealty, and as we now realize that she 
is no more, but sleeps in death, we, too, in pathetic 
and profoundest sorrow, turn our eyes heavenward 
and cry out: "God alone is great." 

The practical spirit of the present times would say 
that the age of chivalry is gone; but, as the repre- 
sentatives and descendants of an ever-chivalrous 
people, we can confidently challenge this coarse con- 
clusion, — the outgrowth of a period marked by the 
exaltation of money and money-getting, — and point 
to the love of Southern men for this child whom il- 
lustrious warriors adopted and were proud to claim 
as their own, and confidently aver that, whatever may 
be said of others, in the hearts of Confederate sol- 
diers there still burns with unquenchable flame and 
unconquerable force that spirit which makes men gal- 
lant, heroic, and true. 



146 Oratory of the South 

There are occasions when the hush and solemnity 
of death become intensest eloquence, and speak with 
a pathos and power that are simply immeasurable. 
No exhibition ever witnessed in. any land is more 
touching, no emotion ever aroused in human heart 
more magnanimous, no offering more unselfish, no at- 
tachment more generous, than this affection Confed- 
erate veterans tendered in life, and now declare in 
death, for the daughter of Jefferson Davis. 

Only a few brief months have elapsed since, in the 
fullness of a matured womanhood, in the splendor 
of a superb filial consecration, and with a simple and 
unaffected appreciation, for the last time she received 
the enthusiastic cheers and unqualified adoration of 
her Confederate fathers and friends; and in all that 
vast assemblage that greeted her as only Confederate 
soldiers could greet, there was not a single heart 
which failed to respond to that intense rapture and 
that impassioned delight her welcome presence always 
evoked. 

Born amid the conflicts of the mightiest war the 
world has ever witnessed, cradled within the sound 
of the cannon's roar, and often awakened from sleep 
by the rattle of the musketry which defended the 
capital of the country for which her father offered 
the costliest sacrifice of all those who defended its 
life and its name; in her very infancy made to feel 
the deepest grief in the misfortunes and indignities 
heaped upon him who was the President of the na- 
tion the South so heroically struggled to maintain, 
she had experiences which have only come into one 
life during all the ages of the world. No other 
woman in the history of the world ever held such 
a place as our Daughter of the Confederacy. The 
adopted child and idol of those who followed Lee, 
Jackson, the Johnstons, Forrest, Stuart, and Morgan, 
she had all that noblest sentiment, faithfulest loyalty, 



Bennett H. Young 147 

and most chivalrous devotion could bestow, and 
neither affection nor ambition could add anything to 
the superb crown which Confederates have placed on 
her brow. 

Earth can yield no purer and no more generous 
love than that which the men and women of the Con- 
federacy bore Winnie Davis. It caught the impress 
of heavenly touch and felt the mark of an angelic 
birth. No selfishness tarnished its resplendent bright- 
ness, no insincerity marred its exceeding tenderness, 
no limit prescribed its inexpressible gentleness, and 
no figures could calculate its immeasurable depths. 
It was a sentiment, but it was exalting, ennobling, ele- 
vating, and in every way worthy of the most heroic 
and sublimest of human emotions. 

The ordinary loves of human souls wax and wane ; 
they are not always equal in their strength and flow, 
but this love to "Our Daughter" knew no decrease 
in its irresistible and unchanging current. Her pres- 
ence was not needful to quicken its impulses, and her 
absence did not slacken its fervor. As she stood 
alone in the splendor of her position as the only 
Daughter of the Confederacy, she had no cause to 
fear rivalry and never any reason to question the loy- 
alty of the hearts who claimed her as their child. 

When the shadows of time were lengthening about 
the heart and home of Jefferson Davis, and the dim, 
fading light, death's forerunner, cast its softening 
rays across the paths he must tread; when the warn- 
ing echoes from the immortal land were caught by 
the hills about his mortal abode; when the mystic 
lore of coming events which deepens with life's sunset 
whispered in the ear of the patient and heroic father 
that the parting of ways for him and his beloved 
child was only a little way ahead, he bethought him 
of her future, and, with unquestioning faith and un- 



148 Oratory of the South 

wavering confidence, he committed her protection and 
care to the people he had loved so well. 

The misfortunes which came to him as the head 
of the Confederate States left him no store of wealth 
from which to provide endowment to shield from 
want, or to construct mausoleum to honor in death; 
but he devised her, as his richest and noblest legacy, 
to a generous nation. She was to him of value which 
was incomparable with gold or costliest gem. That 
absolute trust in the generosity of Southern people 
has met worthiest response. Loved, honored, adored 
in her life, her sisters of the Confederacy, in her 
death, have builded her monument, which, though 
simple in its structure, is voiceful of a love and admi- 
ration which will abide forever. 

She rests in the bosom of the State which gave her 
birth and which, at the end, offered her repose amid 
the tombs of her most illustrious children. On the 
banks of the James River, close to where, nearly three 
hundred years ago, came the Cavalier, imparting to 
Southern manhood the uplifting power of his genius, 
his courage, and his chivalry, they have given her 
lasting sepulcher. The breezes from every hillside, 
valley, and mountain of the Southland shall bear 
tenderest benedictions to her tomb, and the rippling 
waters of the stream beside which she rests — fresh 
from the mountain tops which pierce the blue skies 
overhanging the mighty Alleghanies — shall murmur 
softest requiem by her grave ; and, as these flow into 
the mighty ocean, they will be taken up by the chain- 
less winds which sweep with unbroken power the face 
of the great deep and, in harmonious melody, tell the 
story to all the world of the marvelous and wondrous 
love of the people of the South for Winnie Davis, 
"The Daughter of the Confederacy." 



John W. Daniel 149 

A FOLLOWER OF LEE 

JOHN W. DANIEL 

United States Senator from Virginia 

[Extract from an oration delivered at the unveiling of 
the recumbent figure of General Lee, at Washington and 
Lee University, Lexington, Va., June 28, 1883.] 

There was no happier or lovelier home than that 
of Colonel Robert E. Lee in the spring of 1861, 
when for the first time its threshold was darkened 
with the omens of civil war. Crowning the green 
slopes of the Virginia hills that overlook the Poto- 
mac, and embowered in stately trees, stood the ven- 
erable mansion of Arlington, facing a prospect of 
varied and imposing beauty. 

So situated was Colonel Lee in the spring of 1861, 
upon the verge of the momentous revolution of which 
he became so mighty a pillar and so glorious a chief- 
tain. How can we estimate the sacrifice he made to 
take up arms against the Union? Lee was emphat- 
ically a Union man; and Virginia, to the crisis of 
dissolution, was a Union State. He loved the Union 
with a soldier's ardent loyalty to the government he 
served and with a patriot's faith and hope in the in- 
stitutions of his country. In January, 1861, Colonel 
Lee, then with his regiment in Texas, wrote to his 
son: "As an American citizen, I take great pride in 
my country, her prosperity and institutions; and yet 
I would defend my State were her rights invaded. 
But I can anticipate no greater calamity to the coun- 
try than a dissolution of the Union. Secession is 
nothing but revolution. ... If the Union is 
dissolved, I shall return to my native State and share 
the miseries of my people and, save in defense, will 
draw my sword on none." 

The war-cloud lowered. On April 1 5 came Presi- 



150 Oratory of the South 

dent Lincoln's proclamation for seventy-five thou- 
sand men. This proclamation determined Virginia's 
course, and an ordinance of secession was passed. 
War had come. 

"Under which flag?" was the sternly pathetic 
question that Lee must now answer. On the one 
hand Virginia, now in the fore-front of a scarcely 
organized revolution, summoned him to share her 
lot in the perilous adventure. The young Confeder- 
acy is without an army; there is no navy, no cur- 
rency. There is little but a meager and widely scat- 
tered population, for the most part men of the field, 
the prairie, the forest, and the mountain, ready to 
stand the hazard of an audacious endeavor. Did he 
fail, his beloved State would be trampled in the mire 
of the ways ; his people would be captives, their very 
slaves their masters; and he — if of himself he 
thought at all — he, mayhap, may have seen in the 
dim perspective the shadow of the dungeon or the 
scaffold. 

On the other hand stands the foremost and most 
powerful republic of the earth. Its regular army 
and its myriad volunteers rush to do its bidding. Its 
capital lies in sight of his chamber window, and its 
guns bear on the portals of his home. A messenger 
comes from its President and from General Scott, 
Commander-in-Chief of its army, to tender him su- 
preme command of its forces. No man could have 
undergone a more trying ordeal or met it with a 
higher spirit of heroic self-sacrifice since the Son of 
Man stood upon the mount, saw "all the kingdoms 
of earth and the glory thereof," and turned away 
from them to the agony of Gethsemane. 

To the statesman, Mr. Francis P. Blair, who 
brought him the tender of supreme command, Lee 
answered, "Mr. Blair, I look upon secession as an- 
archy. If I owned the four million slaves in the 



John W. Daniel 151 

South I would sacrifice them all to the Union. But 
how can I draw my sword against Virginia?" 

Draw his sword against Virginia? Perish the 
thought ! Over all the voices that called he heard the 
still small voice that ever whispers to the soul of the 
spot that gave it birth; and over every ambitious 
dream there rose the face of the angel that guards 
the door of home. 

I pause not here to defend the course of General 
Lee. In the supreme moments of national life, as in 
the lives of individuals, the actor must resolve and 
act within himself alone. The Southern States acted 
for themselves — the Northern States for themselves 
— Virginia for herself. And when the lines of 
battle formed Lee took his place in the line beside 
his people, his kindred, his children, his home. Let 
his defense rest on this fact alone. Nature speaks 
it. Nothing can strengthen it. Nothing can weaken 
it. The historian may compile ; the casuist may dis- 
sect; the statesman may expatiate; the advocate may 
plead; the jurist may expound; but, after all, there 
can be no stronger and tenderer tie than that which 
binds the faithful heart to kindred and home. And 
on that tie — stretching from the cradle to the grave, 
spanning the heavens, and riveted through eternity 
to the throne of God on high, and underneath in the 
souls of good men and true — on that tie rests, stain- 
less and immortal, the fame of Robert E. Lee. 

In personal appearance General Lee was a man 
whom once to see was ever to remember. His figure 
was tall, erect, well proportioned, lithe, and graceful. 
A fine head, with broad, uplifted brows, and features 
boldly yet delicately chiseled, bore the aspect of one 
born to command. His whole countenance bespoke 
alike a powerful mind and an indomitable will, yet 
beamed with charity, benevolence, and gentleness. In 
his manners quiet, reserve, unaffected courtesy, and 



152 Oratory of the South 

native dignity made manifest the character of one 
who can only be described by the name of gentleman. 
And taken all in all, his presence possessed that grave 
and simple majesty which commanded instant rever- 
ence and repressed familiarity; and yet so charmed 
by a certain modesty and gracious deference, that rev- 
erence and confidence were ever ready to kindle into 
affection. It was impossible to look upon him and 
not to recognize at a glance that in him nature gave 
assurance of a man created to be great and good. 

Mounted in the field and at the head of his troops, 
a glimpse of Lee was an inspiration. His figure was 
as distinctive as that of Napoleon. The black slouch 
hat, the cavalry boots, the dark cape, the plain gray 
coat without an ornament but the three stars on the 
collar, the calm, victorious face, the splendid, manly 
figure on the gray war horse, — he looked every inch 
the true knight, the grand, invincible champion of a 
great principle. 

The men who wrested victory from his little band 
stood wonder-stricken and abashed when they saw 
how few were those who dared oppose them, and 
generous admiration burst into spontaneous tribute 
to the splendid leader who bore defeat with the quiet 
resignation of a hero. The men who fought under 
him never revered or loved him more than on the day 
he sheathed his sword. Had he but said the word, 
they would have died for honor. It was because he 
said the word that they resolved to live for duty. 

Plato congratulated himself, first, that he was born 
a man; second, that he had the happiness of being 
a Greek; and, third, that he was a contemporary of 
Sophocles. And in this audience to-day, and here 
and there the wide world over, is many a one who 
wore the gray who rejoices that he was born a man 
to do a man's part for his suffering country; that he 
had the glory of being a Confederate; and who feels 



Augustus O. Stanley 153 

a justly proud and glowing consciousness in his 
bosom when he says unto himself: "I was a follower 
of Robert E. Lee. I was a soldier in the Army of 
Northern Virginia." 

Come we then to-day in loyal love to sanctify our 
memories, to purify our hopes, to make strong all 
good intent by communion with the spirit of him who, 
being dead, yet speaketh. Let us crown his tomb 
with the oak, the emblem of his strength, and with 
the laurel, the emblem of his glory. And as we seem 
to gaze once more on him we loved and hailed as 
Chief, the tranquil face is clothed with heaven's light, 
and the mute lips seem eloquent with the message that 
in life he spoke: 

"There is a true glory and a true honor; the glory 
of duty done, the honor of the integrity of principle." 



LEE AND APPOMATTOX 

AUGUSTUS O. STANLEY 

Congressman from Kentucky 

[Extract from an address delivered before the Hamilton 
Club, Chicago, April 22, 1907, upon the occasion of the 
celebration of "Appomattox Day."] 

Right or wrong, it matters little now, Robert E. 
Lee believed in the sovereignty of the Southern 
States, and modestly offered himself to his country- 
men and his Commonwealth. His espousal of the 
cause of the Confederacy was hailed with delight; 
he was showered with honors^ and entrusted with high 
command. He accepted the sword tendered him 
with the terseness of a soldier, the ardor of a patriot, 
and the humility of a Christian. 

How well and how long he defended the be- 
leaguered capital of the Confederacy I need not re- 



154 Oratory of the South 

late ; history has yet to do full justice to the miracles 
of his genius and the prodigies of his valor. McClel- 
lan, Pope, Burnside, and Hooker, each in turn hurled 
his mighty and puissant hosts against that grim, gray 
line known as the Army of Northern Virginia, and 
each in turn reeled, staggering and bleeding, from 
the deadly encounter. I need not speak of Second 
Manassas, Harper's Ferry, Fredericksburg, or Chan- 
cellorsville — those mighty monuments to his prowess 
and his glory are deathless and eternal as the red 
annals of war. In the flush of triumph, in the wild 
tumult of victory, the conqueror still loomed tower- 
like above his conquests. 

Great in victory, he was greater still in defeat. Be- 
hold him after the three days' fight at Gettysburg, 
where first he faced disaster, with untold magnan- 
imity assuming all the responsibility for that fateful 
day — attributable to another's error or another's 
fault; smiling and tranquil, he rides among his shat- 
tered and disordered columns, rising above the terror 
and turmoil around him, sublime, serene, undaunted; 
they halt at his command and rally to the magic of his 
call. Chaos becomes order and the Army of North- 
ern Virginia wheels about in serried array, its spirit 
unbroken and its faith in its mighty chief unaltered 
and unalterable. 

In the meantime there had arisen in the West a 
soldier, broad in conception, patient and capable in 
action, rigid and changeless as fate in his invincible 
purpose. He had twice bisected the Confederacy. 
Sherman, leaving desolation in his wake, was march- 
ing unimpeded toward the sea. On all sides, obedient 
to his masterful design, there was converging about 
the doomed Virginians a sinister and rigid cordon, 
bristling with bayonets, indifferent to slaughter and 
indomitable in its purpose, "through the southwest- 
ern mountain passes, through the gates of the lower 



Augustus O. Stanley 155 

valley, from the battle-scarred vales of the Rappa- 
hannock, from the Atlantic seaboard to the waters 
of the James, came the serried hosts on field and 
flood." 

Lee rallied the wreck of his gallant army for the 
last encounter, but neither genius nor valor could 
avail — 

"Cannon to right of them, 

Cannon to left of them, 

Cannon in front of them, 

Volleyed and thundered." 

The Confederate lines, extending for thirty miles, 
thinned and attenuated, clutched the earth like a wild 
beast, and in the teeth of impending doom fought on, 
fierce and determined. At last surrounded in the 
open plain, barefooted, tattered, pinched with hunger, 
gaunt from famine, staggering from sleeplessness and 
exhaustion, the ghastly wraith of the Army of North- 
ern Virginia, its last ration consumed and its last 
round of ammunition exhausted, bowed to the inevit- 
able. 

Less than eight thousand ragged veterans dropped 
their bright muskets from nerveless hands when 
Lee tendered his stainless sword to the most determ- 
ined foe and the most magnanimous conqueror of 
the age. 

I rejoice that to-night, upon the anniversary of that 
fateful day, the South contemplates the scene with- 
out shame, and the North without exultation. 

The modest magnanimity of the Federal chief 
made of Appomattox more than a surrender — it was 
reconciliation. Even in the flush of his great tri- 
umph he remembered with tender consideration the 
vanquished foe. All salutes and demonstrations cal- 
culated to wound the pride or harrow the feelings 
of the fallen Conferedates were forbidden; he re- 



156 Oratory of the South 

minded his veterans that their foes of yesterday 
would be their countrymen of to-morrow. 

Nor shall the South forget that when a Federal 
grand jury sought to disregard the soldier's parole, 
and to stain that sword, the trophy of his valor and 
his prowess, he defended the honor and the life of his 
mighty captive with the same grim determination 
with which he had maintained the Union, and neither 
Senates nor Presidents could shake or alter his fixed 
resolve. At the bier of Grant a reunited nation 
stood, with uncovered head, while veterans, blue and 
gray, with tearful eyes and tender hands laid him to 
rest. 

After the lapse of half a century its cruel wounds 
all healed, its battle-scarred plains covered with ver- 
dure, and five hundred thousand graves embowered 
in flowers, — North and South alike, — we look back 
upon that mighty and fraternal strife with a feeling 
of sadness and a sense of infinite regret. 

Many are the reasons assigned for this conflict by 
statesmen and historians, yet they are all but the re- 
sults of the one great cause — the North had ceased 
to know the South, and the South was a stranger to 
the North. It is impossible to long misunderstand 
a good man if you know him; antagonism between 
one section of this country and another is impossible 
if there is intercourse between these sections. Then 
and now we were brothers all. 

North and South have more than forgotten the 
losses, the wounds, and the anger of yesterday, for 
the all-sufficient reason that both sections alike, glory- 
ing in their strength, blessed with prosperity and 
wealth, and exultant in the anticipation of a still 
brighter and grander day, simply have no time to re- 
member. 



Colonel William H. Stewart 157 

EULOGY ON GENERAL LEE 

COLONEL WILLIAM H. STEWART 

[An address before the United Daughters of the Con- 
federacy, January 19, 1901.] 

Mrs. President, Portsmouth Chapter, U. D. C, and 
Their Friends: 

The centuries have given many men to measure up 
to the standard of greatness ; many men worthy of a 
place in the temple of fame; many of prodigious 
valor; many of thrilling chivalry; many of brilliant 
intellectual attainments; many of splendid virtues; 
but, as I see, no single character is or has been so 
deeply loved by the people whom he served, and few 
more generally admired by the world, than Robert 
Edward Lee. His very name is inspiration to the 
hearts of Southerners; his conduct a model for their 
children; his great goodness like a ceaseless prayer 
for their welfare. 

General Lee was great and good, brilliant and 
modest, humble and true, faithful to his God and 
fellows. His life is a picture of love and beauty; 
and all his actions from youth to old age were infused 
with the highest ideals of duty. No considerations 
could turn him from its path; no inducements could 
swerve his inflexible devotion to truth. 

A cavalier ancestor of the eleventh century left 
him lessons of true pride, honor, self-sacrifice, and 
generous nature, and a father like "Light Horse 
Harry" gave a light which must have in a measure 
guided his conduct. 

Robert E. Lee was born on January 19, 1807, in 
the same house and same room in which Richard 
Henry Lee and Francis Lightfoot Lee, two signers 
of the Declaration of Independence, were born. 

It might be said that he inherited honor and fame ; 



158 Oratory of the South 

nevertheless, he held them not as an idler's toy, but 
applied his vigorous energies and imperial intellect 
to emulate his forefathers in all their courageous, 
virtuous, and noble characteristics. 

He commenced his boyhood in the line of merito- 
rious manhood. When he entered West Point he 
took the head of his class and held it until he was 
graduated in 1829, never having received a demerit 
or reprimand during his term there. He entered upon 
the duties of an army officer with the highest honor 
of his military school, and afterward, in the fiery rush 
of battle, held fast to his attainment and was thrice 
brevetted for gallant and meritorious conduct in the 
Mexican war. 

He served thirty years in the United States army, 
and was considered by all officers, almost without 
exception, to be, by many degrees, the most accom- 
plished soldier in the service. 

The commander-in-chief, General Winfield Scott, 
entertained such an opinion of him, and said: "Lee 
is the greatest military genius in America." 

He undoubtedly stood highest on the military 
record of the United States army when Virginia 
seceded. Had rank, self-aggrandizement, success and 
wealth been his dream of life, he would have re- 
mained in the old army. 

All the allurements of power and place a mighty 
nation could tender were in the request to unsheathe 
his sword as commander-in-chief of Lincoln's armies. 
But the metal of the man was not poured in that mold 
which turns out the creature for the dazzling equip- 
ments of success at the sacrifice of honor. No place 
could win and no power could tempt him from that 
path of duty which led him to draw his sword for 
Virginia. 

Here his mighty character unfolded itself to the 
world, and it stood the test under every condition. 



Colonel William H. Stewart 159 

General Lee was high in the opinion of the people, 
and their expectations were great when he was or- 
dered to command the defeated army of the slain 
Garnett; but he failed to retrieve the disasters in 
western Virginia; and the indignation of the incon- 
siderate public arose against him as the cruel blasts of 
a destructive cyclone. 

His military reputation fell as fevered mercury on 
Arctic ice, and popular prejudice retired him to the 
list of inefficient officers. Had its verdict held, no 
great general, no illustrious military leader, no loved 
hero for the South, would be personified in Robert 
E. Lee. 

But the hand which guided the helm of the Con- 
federacy knew the man and the fickle public could not 
deter or restrain its judgment. Therein was the man- 
hood and statesmanship of Jefferson Davis. He 
deserves a monument from the South by every con- 
sideration of patriotism and justice. 

Say what you may of President Davis, we owe to 
him the rescue of our beloved Lee from the merciless 
oblivion of unjust and cruel public opinion. Mr. 
Davis leaves us a great lesson of charity, to restrain 
our prejudices and govern our judgment. The hero 
and the man were there, although the shadows of piti- 
less night concealed the majestic form. 

After General Joseph E. Johnson was incapacitated 
by wounds at Seven Pines, Jefferson Davis made 
Robert E. Lee commander of the army in spite of 
misfortune. There began a career so brilliant as to 
entitle him to be classed with the greatest generals 
on the lists of renown. 

He took but one week to defeat McClellan's great 
army, relieve the siege of Richmond, and reinstall 
himself as the best loved hero in all the South. Then 
followed in the course of time the great battles of 
Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Get- 



160 Oratory of the South 

tysburg, Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor, 
and Petersburg, in which his matchless leadership 
thrilled the world. 

But perhaps the true greatness of the man was 
more vividly displayed after his surrender at Appo- 
mattox, when he said: "I have led the young men of 
the South in battle; I have seen many of them fall 
under my standard. I shall devote my life now to 
training young men to their duty in life." 

Lord Wolseley said: "I have met many of the 
great men of my time, but Lee alone impressed me 
with the feeling that I was in the presence of a man 
who was cast in a grander mold and made of different 
and finer metal than all other men. He is stamped 
upon my memory as a being apart and superior to all 
others in every way, a man with whom none I ever 
knew and very few of whom I have read are worthy 
to be classed." 

Modesty, gentleness, simplicity, benevolence and 
Christian humility, added to Robert E. Lee's mili- 
tary genius, made him the man whom the South 
prizes as its individuality, and national exemplar. 

Notwithstanding international edict and national 
law, to all of which I yield perfect obedience, there 
is and will be a national South in the hearts of her 
true people; and may God let it live, because it 
symbolizes chivalry, truth, honor, pride, patience, and 
self-abnegation, as the life of Robert E. Lee exempli- 
fied; not only by our estimation, but by that of the 
London Standard: "A country which has given birth 
to men like him, and those who followed him, may 
look the chivalry of Europe in the face without 
shame, for the fatherlands of Sidney and Bayard 
never produced a nobler soldier, gentleman, and 
Christian than General Robert E. Lee." 

And the honor of his birthday by the Daughters of 
the Confederacy must stimulate the virtues of the 



Henry Watterson 161 

people, enkindle the patriotism of the men, and 
make these noble women sponsors of Christian 
knighthood in our Southland. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

HENRY WATTERSON 

Editor of the Louisville (Kentucky) Courier- Journal 

[Extract from his oration on Lincoln, first delivered be- 
fore the Lincoln Union at Chicago, February 12, 1895.] 

From Caesar to Bismarck and Gladstone the world 
has had its statesmen and its soldiers — men who rose 
to eminence and power step by step, through a series 
of geometric progression, as it were, each advance- 
ment following in regular order one after the other, 
the whole obedient to well-established and well- 
understood laws of cause and effect. They were not 
what we call "men of destiny." They were "men of 
the time." They were men whose careers had a be- 
ginning, a middle, and an end, rounding off lives with 
histories, full it may be of interesting and exciting 
events, but comprehensive and comprehensible, 
simple, clear, complete. 

The inspired ones are fewer. Whence their ema- 
nation, where and how they got their power, by what 
rule they lived, moved, and had their being, we know 
not. There is no explication to their lives. They 
rose from shadow and they went in mist. We see 
them, feel them, but we know them not. They came, 
God's word upon their lips; they did their office, 
God's mantle about them; and they vanished, God's 
holy light between the world and them, leaving be- 
hind a memory, half mortal and half myth. From 
first to last they were the creations of some special 
Providence, baffling the wit of man to fathom, de- 



162 Oratory of the South 

feating the machinations of the world, the flesh and 
the devil until their work was done, then pass- 
ing from the scene as mysteriously as they had come 
upon it. 

Tried by this standard, where shall we find an 
example so impressive as Abraham Lincoln, whose 
career might be chanted by a Greek chorus as at once 
the prelude and the epilogue of the most imperial 
theme of modern times? 

Born as lowly as the Son of God, in a hovel; 
reared in penury, squalor, with no gleam of light or 
fair surrounding ; without graces, actual or acquired ; 
without name or fame or official training : it was re- 
served for this strange being, late in life, to be 
snatched from obscurity, raised to supreme command 
at a supreme moment, and intrusted with the destiny 
of a nation. 

The great leaders of his party, the most experi- 
enced and accomplished public men of the day, were 
made to stand aside, were sent to the rear, whilst this 
fantastic figure was led by unseen hands to the front 
and given the reins of power. It is immaterial 
whether we were for him or against him ; wholly im- 
material. That during four years, carrying with 
them such a weight of responsibility as the world 
never witnessed before, he filled the vast space al- 
lotted him in the eyes and actions of mankind, is to 
say that he was inspired of God, for nowhere else 
could he have acquired the wisdom and the virtue. 

Where did Shakespeare get his genius? Where 
did Mozart get his music? Whose hand smote the 
lyre of the Scottish plowman, and stayed the life of 
the German priest? God, God, and God alone; and 
as surely as these were raised up by God, inspired by 
God, was Abraham Lincoln; and a thousand years 
hence, no drama, no tragedy, no epic poem, will be 
filled with greater wonder, or be followed by man-- 



Henry Watterson 163 

kind with a deeper feeling, than that which tells the 
story of his life and death. 

I look into the crystal globe that, slowly turning, 
tells the story of his life, and I see a little heart- 
broken boy, weeping by the outstretched form of a 
dead mother, then bravely, nobly trudging a hundred 
miles to obtain her Christian burial. I see this mother- 
less lad growing to manhood amid scenes that seem 
to lead to nothing but abasement; no teachers; no 
books; no chart, except his own untutored mind; no 
compass, except his own undisciplined will; no light, 
save light from Heaven; yet, like the caravel of 
Columbus, struggling on and on through the trough 
of the sea, always toward the destined land. I see 
the full-grown man, stalwart and brave, an athlete in 
activity of movement and strength of limb, yet vexed 
by weird dreams and visions — of life, of love, of re- 
ligion, sometimes verging on despair. I see the mind, 
grown as robust as the body, throw off these phan- 
toms of the imagination and give itself wholly to the 
workaday uses of the world — the rearing of children, 
the earning of bread, the multiplied duties of life. 
I see the party leader, self-confident in conscious rec- 
titude ; original, because it was not his nature to fol- 
low; potent, because he was fearless, pursuing his 
convictions with earnest zeal, and urging them upon 
his fellows with the resources of an oratory which was 
hardly more impressive than it was many-sided. I 
see him, the preferred among his fellows, ascend the 
eminence reserved for him ; and him alone of all the 
statesmen of the time, and the derision of opponents 
and the distrust of supporters, yet unawed and un- 
moved because thoroughly equipped to meet the 
emergency. The same being, from first to last; the 
poor child weeping over a dead mother; the great 
chief sobbing amid the cruel horrors of war; flinch- 
ing not from duty, nor changing his lifelong ways of 



164 Oratory of the South 

dealing with the stern realities which pressed upon 
him and hurried him onward. And, last scene of all, 
that ends this strange, eventful history, I see him 
lying dead there in the Capitol of the nation to which 
he had rendered "the last, full measure of his devo- 
tion," the flag of his country around him, the world 
in mourning. 



LINCOLN AND THE SOUTH 

NEWTON C. BLANCHARD 

Governor of Louisiana 

[Condensed from a speech delivered at a banquet of the 
Sangamon Club, Springfield, 111., February 12, 1907.] 

Let us here to-night take fresh hold on the fact 
that the war closed more than forty years ago. As 
we look back over the four decades of renewed na- 
tional life which have elapsed since that critical time, 
we come to realize in the fullest, and point the world 
to the fact, that our system of government, tried in 
the crucible of civil war and reconstruction, did in- 
indeed emerge therefrom stronger than ever — not 
merely in the legal bonds guaranteeing a Union of 
inseparable States, but stronger than ever in the mu- 
tual understanding, good-will, and friendly feeling 
characterizing the people of the several sections, the 
one towards the other. 

I come from that section whose economic and 
social order was overturned by that war, and whose 
material prosperity was wrecked by it. I came, never- 
theless, to take part with you, here in the Capital City 
of his State, where he lived and where lie his sacred 
remains, in the anniversary celebration of the birth 
of the great leader on your side in that war. I came 
to mingle with your own my tribute of admira- 



Newton O. Blanchard 165 

tion of him, and to voice what I conceive to be the 
South's present estimate of Abraham Lincoln, his life, 
character, and achievements. 

That estimate is so high that we of the South join 
with you of the North in placing him with Washing- 
ton — at the forefront of the illustrious men whose 
lives and careers adorn the pages of American his- 
tory. And right here, sir, my congratulations are 
due and are heartily tendered to this Illinois audience 
that their great State enjoys the proud privilege of 
having given to the nation, to humanity, to the world, 
such a man — one of those rare spirits which have a 
few times only appeared in human history. In his 
case, as in that of other such men, the discovery came 
slowly, but it came. He was dead before the North, 
or the world, understood either it or him. Such is 
the irony of fate. Columbus himself died without 
knowing he had discovered a continent. 

The prejudice and bitterness engendered on both 
sides by the war have happily given way altogether; 
disappointment and gloom on our part and undue 
elation and exultant triumph on yours have been mel- 
lowed and modified by the softening touch of time; 
jealousy, aspersion, disparagement, calumny, have 
everywhere disappeared, and North and South alike 
revere the name of Abraham Lincoln. The memory 
of his great and loving heart, of his forbearance, of 
his gentleness, his patience, his firm faith, of his free- 
dom from passion, from envy, hatred, and malice, 
in the trying time of his exercise of great power, is 
the priceless heritage of a united land. 

But this is not all. The great work he wrought, 
and for which he laid down his life, has come to be 
accepted by mankind everywhere as of supreme be- 
neficence and importance in the world's progress and 
history, and in this judgment the South concurs. In 
all the earth it is recognized that through Lincoln's 



166 Oratory of the South 

efforts and struggles the world was helped onward, 
and humanity moved to a higher level and into a 
brighter day. We of the South give assent to this. 

It is of our faith that "Eternal Wisdom marshals 
the procession of the nations," and that the God of 
the Universe intended the restored Union of Ameri- 
can States to take, in this age and cycle of the world, 
the head of the procession. To this end the great 
American Republic was, in the providence of God, 
put through the trying ordeal of civil war, of battle, 
bloodshed, and sacrifice, to come forth invigorated 
and strengthened for the great task. 

And so it is that the South has come to rejoice, 
along with the North, that the result of the war was 
the full restoration of the Union and not its dismem- 
berment. 

A distinguished Frenchman, meditating amidst 
the graves of the soldiers of both sides at Arlington 
National Cemetery, said: "Only a great people is 
capable of a great civil war." And here, to-night, I 
add, and I know you will sanction it, that only a great 
people is capable of a great reconciliation. Let us, 
alike people of the North and people of the South, 
prove additionally our claim to greatness by the great- 
ness of our reconciliation. Then, indeed, will we be 
fulfilling the prophetic words of Lincoln, given ut- 
terance to in his first inaugural address: "The mys- 
tic chords of memory, stretching from every battle- 
field and every patriot grave to every loving heart 
and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet 
swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, 
as surely they will be, by the better angels of our na- 
ture." 

Oh ! my countrymen, if occasion for this then, how 
much more so now ? More battlefields, more patriot 
graves now, North and South, to inspire this love 
and this feeling; more loving hearts and hearthstones 



John V. L. Findlay 167 

now to touch, to carry the message to, for "the better 
angels of our nature" to visit. They are here to- 
night — those angels. They are in this hall, this ban- 
quet room, and all over this reunited land, and the 
spirit of Abraham Lincoln inspires their work of 
love. 

LINCOLN AT GETTYSBURG 

JOHN V. L. FINDLAY 

Fomerly a Congressman from Maryland 

[Extract from an address on "Maryland Day," at the 
World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, September 12, 
1893.] 

Washington Irving, in one of the most delightful 
sketches ever drawn by his charming pen, has given 
us an account of a visit he once paid to Stratford-on- 
Avon, and remarks that he thought it was something 
to have seen the dust of Shakespeare. 

I have done better. I have seen the living Lin- 
coln in the flesh more than once. I have felt the firm 
grip of that big bony hand that signed the Emanci- 
pation Proclamation, knocked off the shackles of three 
millions of slaves, and in an inspired strain, as sub- 
lime as anything that ever fell from the lips of Isaiah, 
penned the second inaugural. I have looked at close 
range into those mysterious eyes of his, the saddest I 
ever saw in the human head, and tried in vain to ex- 
plore their hidden depths behind which lay a whole 
world of sorrow lost in the shadows of a still more 
tragical world to come. 

I sat under him at Gettysburg amid the new graves 
that, as yet ungrassed, in bare red clay furrowed the 
bosom of the battlefield. I was near enough almost 
to be within the swing of his mighty arm on that 
raw November day, when all unknown to himself, 



168 Oratory of the South 

he was pronouncing a world's oration, not live min- 
utes long, that will be read and spoken when Demos- 
thenes and Cicero, Burke and Sheridan, Webster and 
Clay, may be forgotten. I can see the memorable 
pageant as plainly as if it were passing before me 
now, a vast concourse of citizens and soldiers pressing 
up to a plain plank platform, relieved here and there 
by bits of color where the flag had been twined; the 
grim hills bare of foliage from which the artillery 
duel was fought, with the death's valley between 
strewn with the wreck of Pickett's gallant column, 
and this tall, high-cheek-boned, sad-eyed man, the 
crowning and central figure of it all. 

By the kindness of General Simon Cameron I was 
fortunate enough to get a seat on the platform, and 
could hear and see distinctly everything that went on. 
It is almost a forgotten circumstance, but it is a fact, 
that the first rhetorician of the day, Edward Everett, 
made the set speech of the occasion, and which when 
published filled almost a broadside of the city news- 
papers. He had memorized it with such care from 
the beginning to the end that he never once referred 
to his manuscript for assistance, although he was oc- 
cupied more than an hour in its delivery. It fell flat, 
however, and was soon forgotten, and has never been 
referred to since except in an historical way as one of 
the features of the dedication of the cemetery. And 
yet Mr. Everett had been president of Harvard, Gov- 
ernor of Massachusetts, Senator and Representative 
from the same State in Congress, Minister to the 
Court of St. James', and Secretary of State of the 
United States, and was without question, as I have 
said, the most brilliant rhetorician of the age, there 
being passages in some of his public addresses, 
notably the address at the founding of Washington 
University at St. Louis, and in the splendid descrip- 
tion he has left of the encounter between Webster and 



John V. L. Findlay 169 

Hayne, and in his magnificent eulogy on Washington, 
which, as mere word pictures, are not surpassed by 
anything of the kind in the English language. But 
rhetoric was out of place at Gettysburg. Nobody 
but an orator, and a great orator at that, could get 
the right pitch for such an occasion. A rhetorician 
thinks of himself and the impression that he is mak- 
ing, whereas an orator is only concerned to interpret 
the true meaning of an occasion which all feel, but 
he alone can express. Oratory is not grace. No one 
could have been more stiff and constrained, not to say 
awkward, than Mr. Lincoln. It was not a musical 
voice. His voice was as harsh and strident as the 
November blast. It is least of all the garnishment 
of fine words. Behold, then, this spare man, six feet 
four in height, wearing a long overcoat that almost 
reached to his heels, and made him appear taller still, 
topped with a high silk hat, which helped to elevate 
him still further. See him rise in his place and calmly 
survey the audience for a moment or two, and then 
listen to what comes. I remember no manuscript. I 
can see and hear him now, and recall the very accents 
of his voice, as he uttered his opening sentence: 
"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought 
forth on this continent a new nation conceived in lib- 
erty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are 
created free and equal." As he uttered the words 
"all men" he made us feel that he was scooping in all 
the generations of men, not only the living standing 
before him and the glorious dead who had fallen as 
martyrs to the cause of freedom on that bloody July 
field still resonant with the triumphant echoes of the 
nation's second natal day, but all the oppressed 
among the sons of men of every clime and every age. 
Mr. Lincoln was not only an orator; he was a 
logician, and seldom, if ever, has a logician evolved 
a proposition in terms of eloquence, such as followed. 



170 Oratory of the South 

"We are engaged in a great civil war," he said, "test- 
ing whether that nation or any nation so conceived 
and so dedicated can long endure. We are standing 
on a great battlefield of that war, and we have come 
to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting- 
place for those who gave their lives that that nation 
might live. It is fitting that we should do this, but in 
a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot conse- 
crate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men 
living and dead who struggled here consecrated it far 
above our power to add or detract. The world will 
little note, nor long remember what we say here, [ah ! 
great heart! There you were mistaken!] but it can 
never forget what they did here." 

And then with inconceivable solemnity and earnest- 
ness he summed it all up by saying : 

"It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the 
great task remaining before us, that from these hon- 
ored dead we take increased devotion to that cause 
for which they gave the last full measure of devotion ; 
that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not 
have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall 
have a new birth of freedom, and that government 
of the people, by the people, and for the people shall 
not perish from the earth." 

Applause follows lightly on the sudden awakening 
of the emotions that lie near the surface of the hu- 
man heart, as the shallows of a summer lake ripple 
in the responsive whispers the wooing of every 
passing breeze ; but there are prof ounder depths, like 
the abysmal recesses of the sea, beyond the reach of 
the tidal flow or the imperial sweep of the tempest's 
wing, where the soul holds close communion with 
itself, and is still. Such were the depths stirred by 
Mr. Lincoln. No applause followed; not a voice 
was raised; not a hand was clapped. We would as 
soon have thought of cheering the Sermon on the 
Mount, or the Lord's Prayer itself. 



Morris Sheppard 171 

CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE HEBREW 
PEOPLE TO HUMAN ADVANCEMENT 

MORRIS SHEPPARD 

Congressman from Texas 

[The concluding part of an address delivered before the 
Young Men's and Women's Culture Society of Temple 
Rodeph Sholom, New York City, April 25, 1906.] 

Never have the versatility and value of the He- 
braic genius been more brilliantly demonstrated than 
in the last one hundred years. In politics we find 
Lasalle breathing the German social democracy into 
existence and rivaling Bismarck. We find Lasker, 
the author-statesman, inaugurating the German Lib- 
eral party and leading it in the Reichstag. We find 
Bamberger, the enconomist-historian, assisting in the 
formation of modern Germany. We find Mann- 
heimer, president of the Austrian Diet, and Trier, 
the speaker of the Danish House of Commons. In 
Turkey we find Pasha, a Vice-Admiral of the Impe- 
rial Navy, and his brother the First Dragoman of 
the Imperial palace. In Italy we find Maurogonato 
among the foremost senators and lawyers; Luzzati, 
a conspicuous member of various cabinets; Wollem- 
borg, Victor Emmanuel's first Minister of Finance; 
Artom, an illustrious diplomat, the friend and coun- 
selor of Cavour. In France we find Benavrides one 
of the highest magistrates ; Cremieux, a famous min- 
ister and legislator; Fould, four times a Minister of 
Finance under Louis Napoleon; Gambetta, a de- 
fender of human rights ; See, a champion of woman's 
education. In England we find Disraeli rising from 
the humblest surroundings to become for twenty-five 
years one of the most powerful figures in the world, 
and Lord Herschel twice Lord High Chancellor 



172 Oratory of the South 

under Gladstone. In the United States we find Judah 
P. Benjamin declining a Supreme Justiceship on ac- 
count of his immense private practice, representing 
Louisiana with rare ability in the Federal Senate, 
serving in the cabinet of the Confederacy, and after 
the failure of the Southern cause reaching England 
with shattered fortune at the age of fifty-one to be- 
come a leader of the English bar and to write a work 
on the law of sales that ranks as permanent authority. 
Benjamin once appeared against Webster in the 
United States Supreme Court. Webster occupied 
three hours. Then came Benjamin, physically small 
and insignificant, who spoke in a thin, low voice for 
twenty minutes, when the Chief Justice whispered to 
one of his colleagues: "Great heavens, that little 
man has stated Webster out of court in twenty min- 
utes I" We find Isador Rayner, a worthy successor of 
Benjamin, in the present United States Senate. In 
the national House of Representatives we find our 
own incomparable Mr. Goldfogle, Meyer, Littauer, 
and Kahn. We find Franklin Moses Chief Justice of 
the Supreme Court of California, and Newburger, 
Cohen, Leventritt, Greenbaum, Steckler, and others 
on the bench in New York. 

In other avenues we find the modern Jew pre- 
eminent. In poetry we may point to Drachmann, 
whom competent critics have ranked with Tennyson 
and Byron; in fiction to Auerbach, to Bernstein, and 
to Zangwill; in dramatic literature to Klein, Millaud, 
Halevy, Schlesinger, Von Weilen, Rosenfeld, Be- 
lasco, and Martha Morton; in dramatic art to Son- 
nenthal, — the idol of Vienna, — to Barnay, Braham, 
Rachel, and to Bernhardt, the "queen of attitude"; 
in song to Lucca, Calve, Lehman, Melba, Patti, 
Sembrich and Marcella ; in music to Mendelssohn — 
grandson of the great philosopher, Moses Mendels- 
sohn, Meyerbeer, Strauss, the Damrosches, Ruben- 



Morris Sheppard 173 

stein, and Hoffman; in painting to Israels, Solomon 
J. Solomon, Ulmann, Meyerheim, Lazarus, and Ben 
Austrian; in sculpture to Ezekiel and Antokalski ; in 
writers of history to Edersheim, Herzberg, Rowanin, 
and Geiger; in political economy to Ricardo, Marx, 
Lasalle, and de Bloch; in criminology to Lombroso 
and Max Nordau ; in mathematics to Sylvester, who 
with Cayler founded modern higher algebra; in ex- 
ploration to Emin Pasha; in astronomy to the Her- 
schels, to Goldschmidt, who discovered fourteen as- 
teroids and thousands of new stars, and to Beer, who 
has been called the first cartographist of the moon; 
in medicine to Koller, discoverer of cocaine, to Vir- 
chow and Koch, the renowned specialists in tubercu- 
losis; in botany to Cohn and Pringsheim, who are 
among the first botanists of Germany; in finance to 
the Rothchilds, who perfected modern finance and 
popularized national loans; to Poliakoff and Pe- 
reres, the great Russian and French railway owners; 
in journalism to Pulitzer, to Rosewater, and Ochs; 
in diplomacy to Oscar Straus and Solomon Hirsch ; in 
charity to Montefiore, to Baron and Baroness de 
Hirsch, Schiff, Nathan Straus, and Mrs. Esther Her 
mann. 

It may be seen from this all too brief enumeration 
how few of these great names are connected with 
finance. The Jewish people retain in all its orig- 
inal vigor the spirituality of old Israel. They are 
still devoted to the things of the spirit, and scholar- 
ship, philosophy, art, in fact all intellectual studies, 
are still their favorite and fundamental form of en- 
ergy. Let it be said to civilization's shame that of the 
eleven million Jews in the world more than half this 
number are still subjected in Russia and Roumania to 
the infamous restrictions and oppressions of the Dark 
Ages. 

In this brief and necessarily incomplete discussion 



174 Oratory of the South 

I have tried to outline the principal contributions of 
the Jewish people to human advancement. A com- 
plete description of their achievements would involve 
a review of the history of almost every important 
nation both of the present and the past, and of the 
world itself. They have been patriots in the coun- 
tries of their exile and adoption and cosmopolitans in 
almost every age. In the great transition periods, the 
movements for human elevation, they have played 
fundamental parts. They have been the messengers 
of an idealism from which have flowered purity in 
religion, loftiness in morals, equality in society, and 
majesty in law. In philosophy, science, literature, 
finance, in general culture, in domestic virtue, in 
patriotism and philanthropy, they have been world- 
pioneers, world-counselors. In the preservation of 
their identity, vitality, and refinement through cen- 
turies of cruelty and oppression they have established 
an example which will give new strength and hope to 
inhumanity's victims everywhere. Recalling their 
marvelous record, a record fairly glittering with 
blessings for mankind, it seems unthinkable that 
death and torture and exclusion should have been 
their fortune through so many ages, and that to-day 
they suffer the most ferocious and inexorable dis- 
criminations in eastern Europe. This last condition 
is the foulest stain on our civilization, the darkest 
indictment of our time. If Protestants were wronged 
in eastern Europe as are the Jews — and I, a Protes- 
tant, make the assertion — protests would be thun- 
dered from the leading powers and peoples of the 
earth, protests which unheeded would be re-enforced 
with battleships. 

How proud the heritage of the Jewish young men 
and women! How inspiring the task which con- 
fronts them ! With what purity and culture must 
they fill their souls and lives in order to keep unfurled 



Zebulon Baird Vance 175 

and spotless the banners of the spirit! With what 
courage must they defend the principles of equality 
and justice; with what devotion must they take up 
the cause of their bleeding brethren of the Russian 
and Roumanian captivities ! May they continue to 
promote with every energy the welfare of the respec- 
tive nation's of their allegiance, to spread the teach- 
ings and ideals of intellectual and political freedom, 
of fraternity among republics and empires as well as 
men, and thus bring nearer to humanity the realiza- 
tion of Isaiah's dream of universal peace. 

THE SCATTERED NATION 

ZEBULON BAIRD VANCE 

Some time United States Senator from North Carolina 

[Extract from a lecture delivered in 1882, and thereafter 
in various places, and called his greatest platform discourse.] 

"There is a river in the ocean. In the severest 
droughts it never fails, and in the mightiest floods it 
never overflows. The Gulf of Mexico is its foun- 
tain, and its mouth is in the Arctic seas. It Is the Gulf 
Stream. There is in the world no other such majes- 
tic flow of waters. Its current is more rapid than the 
Mississippi or the Amazon, and its volume more than 
a thousand times greater. Its waters, as far out from 
the Gulf as the Carolina coasts, are of an indigo blue ; 
they are so distinctly marked that their line of junc- 
tion with the common sea-water may be traced by 
the eye. Often one-half of a vessel may be perceived 
floating in the Gulf Stream water, while the other 
half is in the common water of the sea, so sharp is the 
line and such is the want of affinity between those 
waters, and such, too, the reluctance, so to speak, on 
the part of those of the Gulf Stream to mingle with 
the common water of the sea." 



176 Oratory of the South 

This curious phenomenon in the physical world 
has its counterpart in the moral. There is a lonely 
river in the midst of the ocean of mankind. The 
mightiest floods of human temptation have never 
caused it to overflow, and the fiercest fires of human 
cruelty, though seven times heated in the furnace of 
religious bigotry, have never caused it to dry up, 
although its waves for two thousand years have 
rolled crimson with the blood of its martyrs. Its 
fountain is in the gray dawn of the world's history, 
and its mouth is somewhere in the shadows of eter- 
nity. It, too, refuses to mingle with the surrounding 
waves, and the line which divides its restless billows 
from the common waters of humanity is also plainly 
visible to the eye. It is the Jewish race. 

The Jew is beyond doubt the most remarkable 
man of this world, past or present. Of all the stories 
of the sons of men there is none so wild, so wonderful, 
so full of extreme mutation, so replete with suffering 
and horror, so abounding in extraordinary provi- 
dences, so overflowing with scenic romance. There 
is no man who approaches him in the extent and 
character of the influence which he has exercised over 
the human family. His history is the history of 
our civilization and progress in this world, and our 
faith and hope in that which is to come. From him 
have we derived the form of pattern of all that is 
excellent on earth or in heaven. If, as De Quincey 
says, the Roman emperors, as the great accountants 
for the happiness of more men, and men more culti- 
vated than ever before, were entrusted to the motions 
of a single will, had a special, singular, and myste- 
rious relation to the secret councils of heaven — thrice 
truly may it be said of the Jew. Palestine, his home, 
was the central chamber of God's administration. 
He was at once the grand usher to these glorious 
courts, the repository of the councils of the Almighty, 



Zebulon Baird Vance 177 

and the envoy of the divine mandates to the con- 
science of men. He was the priest and faith-giver 
to mankind, and as such, in spite of the jibe and jeer, 
he must ever be considered as occupying a peculiar 
and sacred relation to all other peoples of this world. 
Even now,, though the Jews have long since ceased 
to exist as a consolidated nation inhabiting a com- 
mon country, and for eighteen hundred years have 
been scattered far and near over the wide earth, their 
strange customs, their distinct features, personal pe- 
culiarities, and their scattered unity make them still 
a wonder and an astonishment. 

Though dead as a nation, — as we speak of 
nations, — yet they live. Their ideas fill the world 
and move the wheels of its progress, even as the sun, 
when he sinks behind the western hills, yet fills the 
heavens with the remnants of his glory. As the 
destruction of matter in one form is made necessary 
to its resurrection in another, so it would seem that 
the perishing of the Jewish nationality was essential 
in order to ensure the universal acceptance and the 
everlasting establishment of Jewish ideas. Never 
before was there an instance of such a general rejec- 
tion of the person and character, and acceptance of 
the doctrines and dogmas, of a people. 

We admire with unlimited admiration the Greek 
and Roman, but reject with contempt their crude and 
beastly divinities. We affect to despise the Jew, but 
accept and adore the pure conception of a God which 
he taught us, and whose real existence the history of 
the Jew more than all else establishes. When the 
court chaplain of Frederick the Great was asked by 
that bluff monarch for a brief and concise summary of 
the argument in support of the truths of the Scrip- 
ture, he instantly replied, with a force to which 
nothing could be added, "The Jews, your Majesty, 
the Jews." 



178 Oratory of the South 

I think it may be truthfully said that there is more 
of average wealth, intelligence, and morality among 
the Jewish people than there is among any other 
nation of equal numbers in the world! If this be 
true — if it be half true — when we consider the cir- 
cumstances under which it has all been brought about, 
it constitutes in the eyes of thinking men the most 
remarkable moral phenomenon ever exhibited by any 
portion of the human family. For not only has the 
world given the Jew no help, but all that he has ever 
received, and that but rarely, was to be left alone. 
To escape the sword, the rack, the fire, and utter 
spoiling of his goods, has indeed for centuries been 
to him a blessed heritage, as the shadow of a great 
rock in a weary land. 

The physical persecution of the Jews has measur- 
ably ceased among all nations of the highest civiliza- 
tion. There is no longer any proscription left upon 
their political rights in any land where the English 
tongue is spoken. I am proud of the fact. But 
there remains among us an unreasonable prejudice, 
of which I am heartily ashamed. Our toleration will 
not be complete until we put it away also, as well as 
the old implements of physical torture. 

I agree with Lord Macaulay that the Jew is what 
we have made him. If he is a bad job, in all 
honesty we should contemplate him as the handiwork 
of our own civilization. If there be indeed guile 
upon his lips or servility in his manner, we should 
remember that such are the legitimate fruits of op- 
pression and wrong, and that they have been, since 
the pride of Judah was broken and his strength scat- 
tered, his only means of turning aside the uplifted 
sword and the poised javelin of him who sought to 
plunder and slay. Indeed, so long has he schemed 
and shifted to avoid injustice and cruelty, that we can 



Zebulon Baird Vance 179 

perceive in him all the restless watchfulness which 
characterizes the hunted animal. 

To this day the cast of the Jew's features in repose 
is habitually grave and sad, as though the very plow- 
share of sorrow had marked its furrows across their 
faces forever. 

"And where shall Israel lave her bleeding feet? 
And when shall Zion's songs again seem sweet, 
And Judah's melody once more rejoice 
The heart that leaped before its heavenly voice? 
Tribes of the wandering foot and weary heart, 
How shall ye flee away and be at rest? 
The wild dove hath her nest — the fox his cave — 
Mankind their country — Israel but the grave." 

The hardness of Christian prejudice having dis- 
solved, so will that of the Jew. The hammer of 
persecution having ceased to beat upon the iron mass 
of their stubbornness, it will cease to consolidate and 
harden, and the main strength of their exclusion and 
preservation will have been lost. They will perhaps 
learn that one sentence of our Lord's Prayer which 
it is said is not to be found in the Talmud, and which 
is the keynote of the difference between Jew and Gen- 
tile : "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them 
who trespass against us." If so, they will become as 
other men, and, taking their harps down from the 
willows, will no longer refuse to sing the songs of 
Zion because they are captives in a strange land. 

I believe that there is a morning to open yet for 
the Jews, in Heaven's good time, and if that opening 
shall be in any way commensurate with the darkness 
of the night through which they have passed, it will 
be the brightest that ever dawned upon a faithful 
people. May the real spirit of Christ yet be so 
triumphantly infused amongst those who profess to 
obey his teachings, that with one voice and one hand 
they will stay the persecutions and hush the sorrows 



180 Oratory of the South 

of these their wondrous kinsmen, put them forward 
into the places of honor and the homes of love, so that 
all the lands in which they dwell shall be not home to 
them alone, but to all the children of men who, 
through much tribulation and with heroic manhood, 
have waited for this dawning with a faith whose 
constant cry through all the dreary watches of the 
night has been : "Though He slay me, yet will I trust 
in Him." 



ON THE DEATH OF SENATOR VANCE 

CHARLES W. TILLETT 

Of the Charlotte (N. C.) Bar 

[A funeral oration delivered at a memorial service held 
in Charlotte, N. G, the home of Senator Vance, shortly 
after his death in 1894. Senator Vance was perhaps the 
best beloved and most highly honored citizen that North 
Carolina has ever produced. As Governor of the State he 
was a tower of strength in breaking the power of the Recon- 
struction hordes of the North. He was also one of the most 
famous wits that the country ever produced. He lived close 
to the people, and was familiarly known as "Zeb Vance."] 

"Zeb Vance is dead!" Few and short are the 
cruel words which men with lips compressed and 
cheeks all blanched have whispered one to other; 
and yet they bear the message of the greatest grief 
which ever yet has filled the Old North State. 

Zeb Vance is dead! Ring out the funeral bells 
and let their mournful tones re-echo in the empty 
chambers of the hearts once filled with gladsome 
sounds of his loved voice. 

Zeb Vance is dead ! And Mirth herself hath put 
on mourning; and Laughter, child of his most genial 
brain, hath hid her face in tears. 

Zeb Vance is dead ! The fires of party strife are 



Charles W. Tillett 181 

quenched; and throbbing hearts and tear-beclouded 
eyes tell more than words of grandest eloquence the 
anguish of the people's minds and how they loved 
him. 

Zeb Vance is dead ! The Scattered Nation gathers 
round his tomb and weeps. No High Priest, clad 
in Heaven-appointed robes, e'er plead the cause of 
Israel's race more valiantly than he. 

Zeb Vance is dead ! Soldier, statesman, patriot, 
friend. In war and peace the one of all her sons 
to whom his mother State looked most for succor 
and relief; and can it be that in the days to come, 
when dreaded dangers threaten all around, we never 
more can call for him before whose matchless powers 
in days gone by our enemies have quailed and fled? 

Zeb Vance is dead! His was a name to conjure 
with ; and ofttimes in the past, when this loved Com- 
monwealth of ours was stirred to inmost depths, and 
men knew not which way to go nor what to say, the 
cry was sounded forth, "Our Vance is coming !" and 
from the mountain fastness of the west and from the 
everglades of eastern plains, the people came who 
never would come forth to hear another living man, 
and gathering round in countless multitudes, they 
hung upon his every word with eager, listening ear, 
and all he told them they believed because "our 
Vance" had said it. 

Zeb Vance is dead! And whence shall come the 
man to tell the world the soul-inspiring story of his 
hero life? How, coming forth from humble home, 
he baffled and o'ercame the fates that would have 
crushed beneath their feet a man of meaner mold; 
how serving faithfully and well in every trust com- 
mitted unto him, he soon won first place in the hearts 
of all his countrymen and held that place for three- 
score years unto the end; how, when his native land 
was plunged in throes of civil strife, he went forth 



182 Oratory of the South 

in the front rank to defend and save, and fought with 
valor all her foes; how called to rule as chief execu- 
tive in times that tried men's souls, he ruled so wisely 
and so well; how when the war was over and the 
cause was lost — when down upon his bleeding pros- 
trate country came the horde of vampires from the 
North to suck the last remaining drop of life blood 
from his people, he rose with power almost divine 
and drove them back; and then with gentle hand 
he caused the wounds to heal and his loved land to 
prosper once again as in the days gone by; and how 
at last, when after years of faithful, honest toil, upon 
his noble form was laid the icy hand of Death, he 
bowed his head in meek submission to His will and 
yielded up to God his manly soul! Who can be 
found to sing the praise of such an one, and who can 
speak the anguish of the people's hearts at his un- 
timely death? 

Zeb Vance is dead! He was the friend and tri- 
bune of the people. For though he rose to place 
where he held converse with the great and mighty of 
the earth, his sympathetic heart was open wide to all 
mankind, and his strong arm was first stretched forth 
to raise the lowliest of the sons of men that cried to 
him for help; and in the Nation's Senate halls his 
voice was ever lifted up to plead the cause of the 
downtrodden and oppressed against the favored 
classes and the money kings. 

Zeb Vance is dead! And when he died, a poor 
man died; for though he stood where oft there was 
within his grasp the gains of millions if he would but 
swerve from right to reach it, he cast it all aside 
with scorn, and dying, left his sons, and all the people 
of his land, the priceless gift of an untarnished name. 

Zeb Vance is dead! And yet he lives; the in- 
fluence of his noble words and honest life can never 
die; and in the years to come men gathering round 



John M. Allen 183 

their firesides at the evening hour shall tell their sons 
of him and how he scorned a lie and scorned dishonest 
gains. 

Zeb Vance is dead! But he shall live forever- 
more! Oh, blessed truth, which Mary's Son, the 
God-man, taught when standing near the tomb with 
His all-conquering foot upon the "skull of death," 
called Lazarus forth to life again and told a listening 
world the thrilling truth that whosoever lived and in 
His name believed, should never die. 

Zeb Vance is dead! If it be truth that men may 
rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher 
things, oh, grander truth, that a nation, too, may rise 
on stepping-stones of her dead hero sons unto a higher 
life. And God vouchsafe that our own State, while 
weeping o'er the grave of him, her best-loved, most 
honored son, may by its very grief be lifted into a 
grander, nobler life. 



THE GREAT MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 

JOHN M. ALLEN 

Some time a Congressman from Mississippi; popularly 
known as "Private John Allen" 

[Extract from a speech delivered at a banquet of the 
Chicago Real Estate Board, January 17, 1902.] 

I do not know exactly about the propriety of the 
subject that was assigned to me. Tupelo is not in 
the Mississippi Valley. You know there should 
always be some regard to the proprieties of the toast 
assigned, and I am better prepared to speak on the 
region outside of the Mississippi Valley than that in 
it. I noticed a gentleman complaining some time 
ago about being asked to speak to a toast — a gentle- 
man with one eye and one arm asked to speak to the 
toast of "Our Absent Members." 



184 Oratory of the South 

The Mississippi Valley gives a man abroad subject. 
It reminds me a good deal of a man I heard deliver 
an address down in my country one night. He said : 
"Ladies and gentlemen, as I came to your beautiful 
city this evening some of your citizens very kindly 
invited me to deliver an address to-night, and as I 
came down to the hall I thought upon what subject 
I should address you, and it just occurred to me to 
speak on 'The Past, the Present, and the Future.' " 
The Mississippi Valley is almost as extensive as his 
subject. It is a subject like what the negro said about 
preaching. Somebody asked him if he was a preacher, 
and he said, "No, I am just an exhorter." "What's 
the difference between preaching and exhorting?" he 
was asked. He said, "There's a great deal. In 
preaching you must take a text and stick to it, but 
in exhorting you can branch." Now when you come 
to the Mississippi Valley you can branch. 

No stream in the world ever drained such a mag- 
nificent empire as the Mississippi River drains. You 
know that in the Mississippi Valley is a section of 
country that embraces eight of our great States, two 
of our great Territories, and a good deal of twenty 
other States that are really the heart of this great 
country of ours. It is capable of producing, when 
fully developed, food to feed the world, cotton and 
wool to clothe the world, lumber to house the world, 
coal to warm the world, and gold and silver to carry 
on the commerce of the world. No person who has 
ever thought about it can contemplate the great re- 
sources of the Mississippi Valley. It has in it all 
sorts of climate that a real, thorough, genuine citizen 
would want to live in. You can get it just as cold or 
just as hot as you want it. The Valley has in it all 
sorts of people — all sorts of good people. I know 
more about the people in the lower Mississippi Val- 
ley than I do those in the higher up country. I was 



John M. Allen 185 

engaged some years ago in a little enterprise that 
undertook to split up the Valley, you know. I finally 
succumbed to arguments used by some of the gentle- 
men higher up the Valley. Down in the lower part 
of it, in what we know down South as the Mississippi 
bottoms, the Delta, there is, in my judgment, to-day 
the richest land — you know it is the cream of all 
this great valley that has been drained by the Mis- 
sissippi River for thousands of years, taking a little 
off here and a little off there, and depositing it down 
in what is known as the Mississippi Delta. We used 
to think, you know, that there was a great deal of 
waste land in the Delta, but it is being gradually 
brought into cultivation, and there, in a few years, will 
be a comparatively small section of country that has 
the richness, the fertility, the capacity for producing 
almost anything man wants, that will almost feed 
and clothe the world. You know you used just to 
make cotton goods out of cotton. Now you make 
silk and wool and linen and everything — all out of 
cotton. That is the place where it grows in perfec- 
tion. 

I don't know exactly what the Mississippi Valley 
has got to do with the real estate business in Chicago, 
but I suppose you all want to know something about 
it, and I want to tell you, gentlemen, — I have been 
pretty much all over it, — the whole face of the earth 
in the Mississippi Valley is covered with real estate. 
You know a great deal of this territory was acquired 
in the Louisiana Purchase by Thomas Jefferson, which 
is said to have been one of the greatest real estate 
deals that ever took place, and proved to be a most 
profitable transaction. I have never struck a real 
estate man who had a corner lot to sell from that 
time since but who has tried to convince me that there 
was the same sort of bargain in what he had to sell 
that Thomas Jefferson got in his trade with Na- 



186 Oratory of the South 

poleon. But it can be truthfully said that braver 
men never rode finer horses over richer land to see 
fairer women than those that live and have lived in 

the Mississippi Valley. 



THE MYSTERIES AND GLORIES OF DU- 
LUTH AND THE ST. CROIX 

J. PROCTOR KNOTT 

Congressman from Kentucky, 1866-1880; Governor of 
Kentucky, 1 883-1 887 

[Extract from a speech delivered in the House of Rep- 
resentatives January 27, 1871, on the "St. Croix and Bay- 
field Railroad Bill." At the time of the delivery of this 
speech the country was fairly entering the period of astonish- 
ing development following the Civil War. It was also a 
time of wild speculation. "Lands inhabited only by wild 
animals and Indians were covered all over — on maps and 
prospectuses — with a network of railroad and telegraph 
lines." Mr. Knott's speech on Duluth, made at the height 
of this speculative fever, so appealed to the sense of the ridic- 
ulous that it was quoted and laughed over as no speech 
made in Congress ever had been before.] 

Years ago, when I first heard that there was some- 
where in the vast terra incognita, somewhere in the 
bleak regions of the great Northwest, a stream of 
water known to the nomadic inhabitants of the neigh- 
borhood as the River St. Croix, I became satisfied 
that the construction of a railroad from that raging 
torrent to some point in the civilized world was 
essential to the happiness of the American people, 
if not absolutely indispensable to the perpetuity 
of republican institutions on this continent. I 
felt instinctively that the boundless resources of that 
prolific region of sand and pine shrubbery would 
never be fully developed without a railroad con- 
structed and equipped at the expense of the Govern- 



J. Proctor Knott 187 

ment, — and perhaps not then. I had an abiding 
presentiment that some day the people of this whole 
country, irrespective of party affiliations, and "with- 
out distinction of race, color, or previous condition 
of servitude," would rise in their majesty and demand 
an outlet for the enormous agricultural productions 
of those vast and fertile pine barrens, drained in the 
rainy season by the surging waters of the turbid St. 
Croix. 

Who will have the hardihood to rise in his seat on 
this floor and assert that, excepting the pine bushes, 
the entire region would not produce vegetation 
enough in ten years to fatten a grasshopper ? Where 
is the patriot who is willing that his country 
shall incur the peril of remaining another day 
without the amplest railroad connection with such 
an inexhaustible mine of agricultural wealth? Who 
will answer for the consequences of abandoning a 
great and warlike people, in possession of a country 
like that, to brood over the indifference and neglect 
of their Government? How long would it be before 
they take to studying the Declaration of Independence 
and hatching out the damnable heresy of Secession? 
How long before the grim demon of civil discord 
would rear again his horrid head in our midst, "gnash 
loud his iron fangs and shake his crest of bristling 
bayonets"? But above all, sir, let me implore you 
to reflect for a single moment on the deplorable con- 
dition of our country in case of a foreign war, with 
all our ports blockaded, all our cities in a state of 
siege, the gaunt specter of famine brooding like a 
hungry vulture over our starving land; our commis- 
sary stores all exhausted, and our famishing armies 
withering away in the field, a helpless prey to the 
insatiate demon of hunger; our navy rotting in the 
docks for want of provisions for our gallant seamen — 



188 Oratory of the South 

and we without any railroad communication what- 
ever with the prolific pine thickets of the St. Croix. 

Now, sir, I repeat I have been satisfied for years 
that if there was any portion of the inhabited globe 
absolutely in a suffering condition for want of a 
railroad, it was these teeming pine barrens of the St. 
Croix. At what particular point on that noble 
stream such a road should be commenced, I knew 
was immaterial. It might be up at the spring, or 
down at the foot log, or the water-gate, or the fish- 
dam, or anywhere along the bank, no matter where. 
But in what direction it should run, or where it should 
terminate, were always to my mind questions of the 
most painful perplexity. I was utterly at a loss to 
determine where the terminus of this great and in- 
dispensable road should be, until I accidentally over- 
heard some gentleman the other day mention the 
name of "Duluth." Duluth ! The word fell upon my 
ear with peculiar and indescribable charm, like the 
gentle murmur of a low fountain stealing forth in 
the midst of roses, or the soft, sweet accents of an 
angel's whisper in the bright, joyous dream of sleep- 
ing innocence. Duluth ! 'Twas the name for which 
my soul had panted for years, as the hart panteth 
for the water-brooks. But where was Duluth? 
Never, in all my limited reading, had my vision been 
gladdened by seeing the celestial word in print. And 
I felt a profounder humiliation in my ignorance that 
its dulcet syllables had never before ravished my 
delighted ear. And, sir, had it not been for this 
map, kindly furnished me by the Legislature of Min- 
nesota, I might have gone down to my obscure and 
humble grave in an agony of despair, because I could 
nowhere find Duluth. Had such been my melan- 
choly fate, I have no doubt that with the last feeble 
pulsation of my breaking heart, with the last faint 



J. Proctor Knott 189 

exhalation of my fleeting breath, I should have whis- 
pered, "Where is Duluth?" 

I find by reference to this map that Duluth is situ- 
ated somewhere near the western end of Lake 
Superior; but as there is no dot or other mark in- 
dicating its exact location, I am unable to say whether 
it is actually confined to any particular spot, or 
whether "it is just lying around there loose." But 
however that may be, I am satisfied Duluth is there, 
or thereabout, for I see it stated here on this map 
that it is exactly 3,990 miles from Liverpool, though 
I have no doubt, for the sake of convenience, it will 
be moved back ten miles, so as to make the distance 
an even 4,000. 

As to the commercial resources of Duluth, sir, they 
are simply illimitable and inexhaustible, as is shown 
by this map. I find here indicated, in the immediate 
vicinity of the Piegan Indians, "vast herds of buf- 
falo" and "immense fields of rich wheat lands." 
This fortunate combination satisfies me that Duluth 
is destined to be the beef market of the world. Note 
that the buffaloes are directly between the Piegans 
and Duluth, and that right on the road to Duluth are 
the Creeks. Now, sir, when the buffaloes are suffi- 
ciently fat from grazing on these immense wheat 
fields, you see that it will be the easiest thing in the 
world for the Piegans to drive them on down, stay 
all night with their friends, the Creeks, and go into 
Duluth in the morning I think I see them now, sir, 
a vast herd of buffaloes, with their heads down, their 
eyes glaring, their nostrils dilated, their tongues out, 
and their tails curled over their backs, tearing along 
toward Duluth, with about a thousand Piegans on 
their grass-bellied ponies, yelling at their heels ! On 
they come ! And as they sweep past the Creeks they 
join in the chase, and away they all go, yelling, bel- 
lowing, ripping, and tearing along, amid clouds of 



190 Oratory of the South 

dust, until the last buffalo is safely penned in the 
stockyards of Duluth ! 

Sir, I might stand here for hours and hours and 
expatiate with rapture upon the gorgeous prospects 
of Duluth, as depicted upon this map. But human 
life is too short and the time of this House far too 
valuable to allow me to linger longer upon the de- 
lightful theme. I think every gentleman on this floor 
is as well satisfied as I am that Duluth is destined 
to become the commercial metropolis of the universe, 
and that this road should be built at once. I am 
fully persuaded that no patriotic Representative of 
the American people, who has a proper appreciation 
of the associated glories of Duluth and the St. Croix, 
will hesitate a moment to say that every able-bodied 
female in the land between the ages of eighteen and 
forty-five who is in favor of "women's rights" should 
be drafted and set to work upon this great work with- 
out delay. 

Nevertheless, sir, it grieves my very soul to be 
compelled to say that I cannot vote for the grant of 
lands provided for in this bill. Ah! sir, you can 
have no conception of the poignancy of my anguish 
that I am deprived of that blessed privilege ! There 
are two insuperable obstacles in the way. In the 
first place my constituents, for whom I am acting 
here, have not the remotest interest in this road ; and 
in the second place these lands, which I am asked to 
give away, alas, are not mine to bestow! My 
relation to them is simply that of trustee to an ex- 
press trust. And shall I ever betray that trust? 
Never, sir! Rather perish Duluth! Perish the 
paragon of cities ! Rather let the freezing cyclones 
of the bleak Northwest bury it forever beneath the 
eddying sands of the raging St. Croix ! 



Clarence N. Ousley 191 

MAN'S RESPONSIBILITY TO THE 
HIGHER LAW 

CLARENCE N. OUSLEY 

Editor of the Fort Worth (Tex.) Record 

[Extract from an address delivered before the literary 
societies of the University of Texas, June 1 8, 1900.] 

There comes a period in the development of every 
mind when it doubts the impalpable. But there 
comes another period in the progress of the learned 
mind when it recognizes its limitations, when it stands 
upon the frontier of thought and looks across an un- 
discovered plain where no footstep marks the thither 
way and faith is the only compass that points a path. 
Then man must acknowledge himself an outcast in 
the wilderness of accident or a child of the Infinite 
who will in time gather his own. 

Probably some of you have reached the period of 
doubt. It usually comes about the knowing age of 
twenty. But I charge you not to fling away faith 
because you know so much now. By experience I 
predict you will know less twenty years hence, and 
it will be time enough then to determine whether 
belief in the spiritual is incompatible with knowledge 
of the material; and the nearer you get to the jour- 
ney's end the more comforting will be the thought 
that a pillar of cloud will lead the way through the 
wilderness and a pillar of fire will light the darkness 
of the nether night. 

Whatever our faith or our creed, we must all own 
the allegiance of the created to the Creator. We 
must recognize our responsibility to the higher law. 
We understand the law though we may not compre- 
hend the law-giver, and we cannot transgress the law 
without becoming criminals. 

Even if we could dismiss the decalogue as the com- 



192 Oratory of the South 

mandments of an antiquated God and the injunc- 
tions of the Nazarene as the mockery of a false 
prophet, there would remain to every man the law of 
conscience, which is common to the savage and the 
civilized, and which we cannot offend without becom- 
ing outlaws. 

Therefore, whether we are Deists or Christians or 
Agnostics, we are subject to the higher law, and if 
we do not obey it we are law breakers. This is as 
simple and logical as the consequence of the infrac- 
tion of State law, and the individual who violates 
the higher law deserves punishment and execration 
precisely as the individual who violates the State law 
deserves the penitentiary and social ostracism. But 
it is one of the flagrant inconsistencies of the social 
code that we turn our backs upon the petty criminal 
and strike hands with the social outlaw. Pure 
women who would flee from a thief as from contagion 
will take to their hearts men who know not con- 
science or virtue ; and men who would not walk down 
the street with a prisoner of the police court will 
make boon companions of those who abuse the license 
of commerce or the weakness of the statutes and rob 
their fellows of millions. 

More than we need laws to regulate commerce we 
need action to educate conscience; more than we need 
reform crusades we need uncompromising standards 
of right living on guard at the doors of our homes; 
and more than we need anything in legislation or 
social economy we need a universal sense of respon- 
sibility to the higher law and the God who framed it. 

Youth often gets into its head the vicious notion 
that it is a brave thing to be wicked. Nothing is 
more false. To be wicked is simply to follow the 
impulse of the brute. To be righteous is to subdue 
the animal, and it requires more courage to overcome 
a single temptation than to lead a life of illicit ad- 



Clarence N. Ousley 193 

venture. The real cowards are the profligates and 
the rakes who drift lazily down the tide of passion 
without daring to grasp the helm or set a sail. There 
is nothing admirable or inspiring about wicked- 
ness. For all there are a few hypocrites who excite 
the world's .contempt and a few good-for-nothing 
saints, in the main the great men of state, the strong 
men of business, and the wise men of learning are 
moral, pious, Godly and God-fearing, while the im- 
moral and the Godless are without position or in- 
fluence. 

This is a Christian land, and we owe respect, if 
not loyalty, to Christian institutions. They are the 
safeguards of society. Without them to-day the 
moral universe would be chaos. We may reject 
dogma and revile creed; we may ridicule the emo- 
tionalism of religion and smile at the threatenings of 
theology; but we cannot deny the truth of Christian 
living, we cannot forget the achievements of Chris- 
tian endeavor, we cannot afford to lose the saving 
grace of Christian influence. 

Christianity is the most intelligent expression of 
the higher law that has yet been given to the world. 
It is the most reasonable faith that the religious in- 
stinct of the universal man has found to satisfy its 
spiritual aspiration. It is the latest if not the last 
formula of the eternal verities. Its teachings are 
above the philosophic wisdom of all the ages. Its 
phenomena have given man a conception if not a 
glimpse of the Almighty Father. Its hopes foretell 
the spiritual destiny if not the physical translation of 
the human race. If it is not true altogether, it is 
so sublime a fiction that it is nothing less than inspira- 
tion. 

To this supreme and splendid principle of noble 
and ennobling life we owe personal and mutual 
responsibility. To the higher law which it expresses 

13 



194 Oratory of the South 

we are pledged in the bond of good conscience and 
in the discretion of the common weal. 

I charge you, as you respect yourselves, take heed 
of your responsibility to your birth and station; as 
you love your country, look well to your fellowman; 
as yet you rank the race higher than the brute; re- 
member the God who made you in his image and 
gave you the uplift of immortal hope. 



JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY 

W. C. P. BRECKENRIDGE 

For some time a Congressman from Kentucky 

[Extract from a speech delivered at a banquet of the Iri- 
quois Club, Chicago, April 13, 1883.] 

Thomas Jefferson was in its loftiest sense a Demo- 
crat; he loved, he trusted, the people; he loved his 
race; he was indeed a man, and there was nothing 
human that was foreign to him. He deified man as 
man, and despised and feared all that could create 
classes or ranks. Man as man was free and capable 
of self-government, was the postulate of all his 
thinking. This was the starting-point of all his 
meditations. All men ought to be free, all men shall 
be free, all men will be free, was the conviction, the 
resolve, the hope of his life. His part was to assist 
in making America free. This was duplex — one 
part was to secure such a government as would pro- 
tect and maintain freedom; the other was to estab- 
lish a policy that would in the end embrace the con- 
tinent. With such a government expansion was pos- 
sible ; neither the number nor the size of the States^ 
nor the extent of population or territory, need cause 
alarm or change. If men are free — if governments 
are founded on the consent of the governed; if local 



W. O. P. Breckemidge 195 

governments are sovereign and federal governments 
can be limited by written compacts or constitutions, 
then the possibility and modification of mere forms 
become infinite. If the object of all governments is 
to protect these inalienable rights, and freemen can 
secure that protection by a union of states under one 
compact, then there is no permanent failure of free 
government possible except on the single hypothesis 
that man is incapable of self-government. 

Jefferson rejected this hypothesis for himself, his 
race, and his country, and accepted with a loving, 
trusting faith in mankind the verity of his hopes. 
But there must be room for the development of such 
principles, and he held the continent to be ours. This 
was the cherished hope of many of that day. 
Neither mountain nor river, nor savage, nor French- 
man, nor Spaniard, nor wilderness was permitted to 
obstruct this glorious view of a homogeneous and 
ocean-bound republic of freemen. They were 
pioneers of a new and magnificent world. The 
ancient kingdoms were to be surpassed by this new 
people for whom God had preserved this virgin and 
enchanting continent. The frozen North and the 
tropic South were to prosper under one flag — the flag 
of the free. This new empire was to dictate law to 
the world, restore peace to the earth, give liberty to 
the oppressed. Here were ample homes to be found 
for the poor, and plenty for the starving. The new 
era of a nobler brotherhood, the sunlit dawn of 
a new day, had begun, and mankind was to find 
ampler room and fresher fields for higher develop- 
ment. To Jefferson these dreams were actualities, 
and with a minuteness of details and a practical 
statesmanship that were equal to the prophetic con- 
ception, he secured freedom by the abolishment of 
a state religion; he destroyed an aristocracy based 
on wealth by abolishing the law of entails and primo- 



196 Oratory of the South 

geniture ; he made naturalization easy ; he dedicated 
the Northwest to a common country and to become 
free States ; he ordered George Rogers Clark to seize 
the bank of the Mississippi River; he aided the 
pioneers of Kentucky to form a new State on the 
basis of universal suffrage and equal representation 
based on numbers, and tried with almost superhuman 
powers to abolish slavery. By these wonderful 
achievements the new republic began its career with 
the freedom of religion, freedom from possible aris- 
tocracy, and the certainty of the addition of new 
States. 

Have we reached the end? Has the future no 
conquests for freedom ? Must we live in the past, and 
content ourselves with recounting the triumphs of the 
fathers? Shall our sons have no laurels of their own 
winning to wear? What can limit the horizon of 
our hopes. What may we not expect? As we re- 
call all the glories of the past, as we exult in the 
prospect of the present, why should we doubt the 
possibilities of the future. It has in store its own 
conquests — conquests by steam and commerce and 
inevitable fate. 

We hear much of a revival of the faith of our 
fathers, of going back to the days of the fathers. 
Democrats, our fathers were progressive; they be- 
lieved in the people, they trusted the people, they 
were the true radicals. We must raise once more the 
standard of the Democracy that was once full of 
hope, candor, and courage, for it had no secrets, it 
had no improper object, and it had the people at its 
back. I pray for the revival of that courage — a 
courage that shot deserters, and made no compro- 
mise of principle for expediency; for a revival of 
that candor that kept nothing hid because it felt that 
there was nothing of which it needed be ashamed. It 
was a simple creed our fathers held, — a Federal gov- 



W. C. P. Breckenridge 197 

ernment supreme in its sphere of limited and dele- 
gated powers, State governments sovereign in their 
sphere ; an impartial and just distribution of the pub- 
lic burdens, so imposed that each paid his share, and 
only his share, of the public tax; no imposition of 
taxes for any purpose other than a public and govern- 
mental object; a strict economy in the public service; 
a rigorous responsibility in the expenditure of the 
public moneys; a sound currency based on coin; care- 
ful regard for all contracts, and scrupulous perform- 
ance thereof according to their tenor; implicit 
obedience to the law ; absolute protection at home and 
abroad of every American citizen; the freedom of 
person, of speech, and of franchise, the purity of the 
elective franchise, and prompt obedience to the will 
of the people as expressed at the polls; cordial rela- 
tions with all the world on the recognized condition 
that no foreign power should have a new foothold on 
this continent; warm sympathy for all people not so 
free as we, an earnest welcome to all who would cast 
their lot with us ; absolute faith in the honesty, cour- 
age, and intelligence of the people, and in the growth, 
wisdom, and prosperity of their country. 

Let this be our creed to-day, and we will achieve 
for our posterity what our fathers did for us. To 
lead we must have the confidence of the people, and 
must deserve that confidence. Whenever they be- 
lieve that the Democratic party do believe in that 
creed, and will in good faith administer the govern- 
ment in the spirit of Jefferson and Jackson — in the 
spirit of economy and progress, of courage and fi- 
delity — we will be given power. The people know 
their power, and our country's destiny. They will 
follow where men lead. Inscribe on our banners 
to-night equal and exact justice to every citizen and 
every State; a just distribution of the public burden; 
faithful fulfillment of every obligation; strict econ- 



198 Oratory of the South 

omy in the public service; trust in the future — one 
flag, one country, one destiny — and we can repeat, 
in the hopeful words of him whose natal day we 
celebrate: "We should have such an empire for 
liberty as she has never surveyed since this creation ! 
and I am persuaded no constitution was ever before 
so well calculated as ours for extensive empire and 
self-government." 



THE MAN WITH HIS HAT IN HIS HAND 

CLARK HOWELL 

Editor of the Atlanta Constitution 

[Condensed from a speech delivered before the Indepen- 
dent Club, Buffalo, N. Y., December 21, 1899.] 

On the day I received the invitation to address 
this distinguished gathering, chance took me to the 
Federal military post in the suburbs of my city. The 
Twenty-ninth Regiment of United States Volunteers, 
then quartered there, and recently landed on the 
other side of the Pacific, had that day received orders 
for their trip of ten thousand miles. The troops 
were formed in full regimental parade in the presence 
of thousands of spectators, among whom were 
anxious and weeping mothers, loving sisters and 
sweethearts, and a vast multitude of others who had 
gone to look, possibly for the last time, upon depart- 
ing friends. 

I thought of the homes these soldier boys were 
leaving, the loved ones left to nurse their anxious 
fears, the aged mother's last caress, the father's sad 
farewell. And I thought of the lot these patriot 
lads had chosen — the tired marches beneath the blis- 
tering sun, the restless nights in rain-soaked tents 
that kept out naught but sleep, the ambushed shots 



Clark Howell 199 

of savages and the bite of the pagan's lead. I saw 
hearts then strong with the pulse of youth stilled by 
the arrow's sting; eyes then bright with the light of 
life stare up from the sodden fields. 

Leaning against a tree close beside me was a white- 
haired mountaineer who looked with intent eyes and 
with an expression of the keenest sympathy upon the 
movements of the men in uniform. His gaze was 
riveted on the regiment, and the frequent applause 
of the visiting multitude fell apparently unheard on 
his ears. The regiment had finished its evolutions; 
the commissioned officers had lined themselves to 
make their regulation march to the front for report 
and dismissal. The bugler had sounded the signal; 
the artillery had belched its adieu as the king of day 
withdrew beyond the hills; the halyard had been 
grasped, and the flag slowly fell, saluting the retiring 
sun. As the flag started its descent the scene was 
characterized by a solemnity which seemed sacred in 
its intensity. From the regimental band there floated 
upon the stillness of the autumn evening the strains 
of "The Star-Spangled Banner." Instinctively and 
apparently unconsciously my tall neighbor by the tree 
removed his hat from his head and held it in his hand 
in reverential recognition until the flag had been 
furled and the last strain of the national anthem had 
been lost in the resonant tramp of the troops as they 
left the field. 

What a picture that was — the man with his hat in 
his hand, as he stood uncovered during that impres- 
sive ceremony ! I moved involuntarily toward him, 
and impressed with his reverential attitude, I asked 
him where he was from. "I am," said he, "from 
Pickens county;" and in casual conversation it de- 
veloped that this raw mountaineer had come to 
Atlanta to say farewell to an only son who stood in 
the line before him, and upon whom his tear-be- 



200 Oratory of the South 

dimmed eyes might then be resting for the last time. 
The silent exhibition of patriotism and loyalty I had 
just witnessed had been prompted by a soul as rugged 
but as placid as the great blue mountains which gave 
it birth, and by an inspiration kindled from the very 
bosom of nature itself. 

How many Americans are there who stand, figura- 
tively, with their hats in their hand, to the honor of 
their country and the glory of its institutions ? Who 
does not follow with patriotic but pathetic devotion 
the hardships of the boys who are lined to-night in 
the trenches in the Philippines, fighting for your flag 
and for mine, enduring toil and privation, and sacri- 
ficing their lives that they may carry the light of 
civilization and the message of American progress 
and prosperity and plant them upon the battlements 
of darkness and discord. 

After a while it will all be over. Peace will be 
won, and then our real work will begin. The school- 
teacher will supplant the soldier, and the caravans 
of commerce will be substituted for the caissons of 
artillery; our mission will be understood, and our 
efforts will not be hindered. Instead of our arsenals, 
our manufactories will supply the tonnage that will 
make the broad bosom of the Pacific heave in the 
welcome embrace of our extended commerce. 

And when this is done, when our mission shall 
have been fulfilled, when peace reigns and law and 
order are established, when the "sword shall be beat 
into the plowshare" and the rays of the tropical sun 
shall kiss the fertile fields of the Philippines, smiling 
in the plenitude of abundant harvests, and the homes 
of their people shall be merry with the music of con- 
tentment — may we not wonder, hat in hand, in 
humble acknowledgment of the divine Providence 
which "doeth all things well," if the immortal Grady 
was inspired when he said : "I catch the vision of the 



John F. Philips 201 

republic — its mighty forces in balance, and its un- 
speakable glory falling on all its children — working 
out its mission under God's approving eye, until the 
dark continents are opened, and the highways of the 
earth established, and the shadows lifted, and the jar- 
gon of nations stilled, and the perplexities of the 
Babel straightened — and under one language, one 
liberty, and one God, all the nations of the world, 
harkening to the American drum-beat and girding up 
their loins, shall march amid the breaking of the 
millennial dawn into the paths of righteousness and 
of peace." 



THE OLD SETTLER'S HOME 

JOHN F. PHILIPS 

United States District Court Judge, Western District of 

Missouri 

[Extract from a speech delivered at the fourth reunion of 
the Tri-State Old Settlers Association, Keokuk, Iowa, Au- 
gust 30, 1887.] 

The sentiment of local attachment among our fa- 
thers had a deep significance. The very perils, hard- 
ships, privations, and struggles which wrought out of 
a dense wilderness and the untamed earth a liveli- 
hood, and constructed a State by the slow and weary 
process of peopling a distant territory, not only made 
the pioneer sturdy, bold, and self-assertive, but it 
begot an attachment, akin to devotion, for every 
cranny and nook where life was so hardly lived. It 
was a clinging as to one's own creation. Instinctively 
he loved the government that stood as a sentry at the 
rude door; that bent in protection over his cradle; 
that inspired his youth; and gave him the acquisi- 
tions of his manhood, while it sheltered his old age. 



202 Oratory of the South 

There is another characteristic of the Old Settler, 
which tended more than all else to make him as 
tender as he was brave, and his heart a flowing spring 
of generosity, simplicity, truth, honor, and virtue. 
It was his love of home. 

The home is where men are bred, states are up- 
builded, and nations glorified. Around it cluster the 
joys and gladness of childhood. There is the well- 
remembered old log house, with "the moss-covered 
bucket that hung in the well," where we were born. 
We can yet see the narrow window where the moon- 
beams stole in and played on our locks while we slept 
the sweet sleep of youth. There are the meadows 
with "dew on the grass and stars in the dew," where 
we chased the many-tinted butterfly, and plucked the 
cowslip and the daisies. 

There is where the old-fashioned mother, who 
knew no book better than the old-fashioned Bible, — - 
King James's translation, — and no better counselor 
than her honest, pious preacher, tenderly held our 
little hands between hers and taught us our first 
prayer and sowed the seeds of the reverence for re- 
ligion which the razure of time and the vitriol of 
modern philosophy have never effaced. We yet re- 
call the face, that scarce lost its color when she heard 
the Indian's yell and the panther's scream, which 
beamed as a benison and benediction on her house- 
hold. The last rose petal had already dropped from 
the cheeks; the luster of her maiden eyes was fading; 
the "brightest feather of the raven's wing" had fallen 
from her hair, and old Time had run many deep fur- 
rows in her once smooth face. But she was queenly. 

She did not want to vote, nor make stump speeches, 
nor "hire a hall and howl," nor care to be a justice 
of the peace. But at the vestal fires of her lofty spirit 
embryo genius kindled; and there went out, as a 
pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, a hallowed 



John F. Philips 203 

influence to lead the people. With an intuitive phil- 
osophy that despises not the day of small things, she 
knew that the rill makes the river, the minutest or- 
ganic cells develop either into human beings or mon- 
sters, and that mere atoms of dust form the everlast- 
ing hills. She therefore wisely felt that she best 
guided and controlled the state by marking, guard- 
ing, and stimulating every discernible quality in her 
child that ennobles manhood and qualifies citizenship. 
There is nothing in all the mad, rushing innovations 
of the seething day in which we live so at war with 
the life of our fathers and mothers as the increasing 
clamor to take out of the home our dear women and 
clothe them with the habiliments and office of men. 
It strikes with gleaming dagger at the very heart of 
our social life and happiness. It shatters the vase in 
which are stored the richest domestic jewels. It puts 
out the vestal fires on the hearthstone; pulls down 
the swinging censer which scatters its sweet per- 
fumes through our homes. It plows up the flower 
gardens, and sows them with rankest weeds. It 
gives us pebbles for rubies and poppies for diamonds. 
It gives us social Bacchantes and literary Medusas. 

Instead of the splendid girl, such as I have seen 
on many a Missouri farm, who could milk a cow and 
play on the piano, ride a wild colt, and "love harder 
than a mule can kick," with the very freshness of 
the mountain on her cheeks, and scattering the val- 
ley's bounty from her hands, — "known by the lights 
that herald her fair presence, the peaceful virtues 
that attend her path, and the long blaze of glory that 
lingers in her train," — our vaunted civilization would 
give us lawmakers for wives, lawyers and doctors 
for sweethearts. We have hungry-eyed maidens 
gazing on the "amber drooping hair" of some idiot 
like Oscar Wilde — longing to "die of a rose in aro- 
matic pain" because they are intercepted in an at- 



204 Oratory of the South 

tempt to run off with the carriage driver, or to wed 
some sublimated dude of the "watery eye and edu- 
cated whisker," whose chief aspiration is to await 
with impatience the taking off of "the old man," that 
he may squander his hard-earned estate in cigarettes, 
perfumes, neckties, and baseball. 

The home was the Old Settler's rendezvous and 
sanctuary. To him it was indeed his castle. It may 
have been covered with coon skins, the rains may 
have descended through its thatched roof, or the 
winds howled through its cracks, yet his social pleas- 
ures were mainly around his own hearthstone. And 

"This is the life, which those who fret in guilt 
And guilty cities never know; the life 
Led by primeval ages, uncorrupt, 
When angels dwelt, and God himself, with man." 



THE BANKER AS A CITIZEN 

THOMAS S. HENDERSON 

Of the Cameron (Tex.) Bar 

[Extract from an address delivered before the Texas 
Bankers' Association, at San Antonio, Tex., May 9, 1899.] 

How splendid the panorama from which, as a 
background, stands the proud figure of the Ameri- 
can citizen, the lord of a continent the fairest in all 
the earth. In physical outlines it has no equal on the 
globe. Behold its grandeur! Locked in the arms 
of the two mightiest oceans, it presents an area in the 
temperate zone greater in extent and more beautiful 
than any other country. Salubrity of climate, fertil- 
ity of soil, variety and magnitude of resources, de- 
clare it to be the ideal home of man. Blessed by the 
noblest government ever conceived by human wis- 
dom, surely its people, children of a common tongue, 



Thomas S. Henderson 205 

are destined to be the dominant and masterful race 
among the nations. Aptly described in the language 
of Jevons as "that nation which has arisen from the 
best stock of England, has absorbed much of the best 
blood of other European nations, and has inherited 
the richest continent in the world, must have an im- 
portance in coming times of which even Americans 
are barely conscious." Resources so vast, possibilities 
so unlimited, impose the highest responsibilities and 
invoke the best efforts of every American citizen. 

But I hear you ask if the obligations of citizenship 
do not rest equally upon all, and by what authority I 
lay down for the banker a different rule of duty from 
that laid down for the ordinary citizen? Theoret- 
ically you are entitled to the answers suggested by 
these questions. But when we leave the abstract and 
proceed to a brief inquiry into the actual conditions 
of citizenship, we discover that while it is true that 
with us the people themselves are the only master 
and that public opinion expressed in the will of the 
majority is the power that governs, yet we must not 
forget that in its final analysis this will of the people 
is no more than the concurrent expression of the indi- 
vidual opinions of those who compose the mass. The 
individual himself is the sovereign factor, and hence 
the effort of every movement is to influence and di- 
rect a majority of the individuals who are the people. 
The power to do this is called leadership, and thus 
under this law of leadership the will of the many is 
not, after all, the will of the many, but is rather the 
will of those few who by virtue of superior capacity 
and power are able to secure the sanction of the ma- 
jority. And those who are able to do this are called 
leaders. And, however much the fact may be dis- 
guised, as in politics under the form of platform de- 
mands and convention mandates, the superior power 
and influence of the capable few to a great extent 



206 Oratory of the South 

create, control, and direct the expression of popular 
opinion. The true governing force is that power 
which suggests, persuades, convinces, and formulates 
the expression of such opinion. The recognition of 
this principle is at the foundation of every successful 
effort to promote progress. We must agree, then, 
that this all powerful ruler, the people, is led about 
by men, just as the little child may lead the mighty 
lion by a silken thread. This "gentle captivity" is 
the result of the confidence and trust of the powerful 
many in the wisdom and sincerity of the capable few. 
This is what magnifies the office, duty, and respon- 
sibility of individual citizenship. And here, as I shall 
maintain, lies the power and opportunity of the 
banker. Circumstances have fitted him for leader- 
ship, and hence his higher duty as a citizen. 

When I address you as citizens, I do not confine 
myself to you merely as bankers, but I speak to you 
in your broader character as representatives of wealth 
and education. In the race of life you have far out- 
stripped the great mass of your fellows. It is not 
profitable for us to pause now to consider the causes 
of your success, for our present purpose is only to 
deal with the fact as it concerns your superior equip- 
ment as a citizen. The honorable acquisition of 
wealth educates and elevates the mind. It broadens 
a man and gives him a better comprehension of the 
great duties of life. Wealth and education make you 
more powerful as citizens than most of your fellows 
who possess but one or neither of these equipments. 
You are better able to comprehend the fact that the 
stage of action for the American citizen has vastly 
widened since the present generation came upon it. 
The general duties of citizenship are more difficult 
for us than they were for our fathers, not that I 
would underrate their splendid achievements, for 
they gave a ready and alert response to every public 



Thomas S. Henderson 207 

question; but the unfolding destinies of this mighty 
government bequeathed by them to their children 
have placed upon us responsibilities greater and more 
varied than have ever been imposed upon any other 
people. The centuries have not enveloped our gov- 
ernment in a castiron formula held in position by his- 
torical precedents and hoary traditions. With us 
the will of the people is the throne of power, and we 
act largely upon our own initiative; and hence the 
perpetuity of our institutions is wholly dependent 
upon the virtue, intelligence, and vigilant patriotism 
of the individuals composing its citizenship. 

While it is true we could not wreck the good ship 
of state if we would, yet this in no respect releases 
any citizen from the complete performance of his 
duty. If the hand at the helm fall away in sleep the 
good vessel may for a time have to be entrusted to 
less skillful hands, and its entrance into the harbor 
of safety may be hindered and delayed. And thus, 
alas ! the one sleeping helmsman may hinder the final 
inevitable anchorage for a whole generation, and 
that generation may be ours. Hence the imperative 
lesson of the hour is the responsibility of individ- 
ual citizenship and the moral duty of every man to 
do his part according to his abilities. So to you, the 
exceptional sons of democracy, qualified for leader- 
ship among your fellows, the appeal comes as a 
command to instant action. The Republic has the 
right to demand the active presence of you men of 
wealth and education whenever and wherever public 
opinion seeks expression, and you cannot discharge 
your obligation as a citizen by an ordinary perform- 
ance. Will you respond to this call of duty, or will 
you, by neglecting the opportunity, give confirmation 
to that widespread distrust of the patriotism of the 
rich? 



208 Oratory of the South 

FRANK P. BLAIR 

CHAMP CLARK 

Congressman from Missouri 

[Extract from a speech delivered in the House of Rep- 
resentatives, February 4, 1899.] 

A few incidents out of a multitude which might 
be cited will show the character of political warfare 
in Missouri in the days when Frank Blair was on 
the boards. 

In the outskirts of Louisiana, Missouri, stand four 
immense sugar trees, which, if the Druidical religion 
were in vogue in the Mississippi Valley, would be 
set aside as objects of worship by the Democrats. 
They form the corners of a rectangle about large 
enough for a speaker's platform. Beneath their 
grateful shadow, with the Father of Waters behind 
him, the eternal hills in front of him, the blue sky 
above his head, in the presence of a great and curious 
concourse of people, Frank Blair made the first Dem- 
ocratic speech delivered in Missouri after the close 
of the Civil War. Excitement was intense. Armed 
men of all shades of opinion abounded on every 
hand. When Blair arose to speak he unbuckled his 
pistol belt and coolly laid two navy revolvers on the 
table. He prefaced his remarks as follows: 

"Fellow citizens, I understand that I am to be 
killed here to-day. I have just come out of four years 
of that sort of business. If there is to be any of it 
here, it had better be attended to before the speaking 
begins." 

That calm but pregnant exordium has perhaps no 
counterpart in the entire range of oratory. 

"There was silence deep as death; 
And the boldest held his breath 
For a time," 



Champ Clark 209 

He then proceeded with his speech, but had not 
been going more than five minutes until a man of 
gigantic proportions started toward him, shaking his 
huge fist and shouting, "He's an arrant rebel! Take 
him out! Take him out!" Blair stopped, looked 
the man in the face, crooked his finger at him, and 
said, "You come and take me out!" which put an end 
to that episode, for the man who was yelling "Take 
him out!" suddenly realized that Blair's index finger 
which was beckoning him on would soon be pressing 
the trigger of one of those pistols if he did go on, and 
he prudently declined Blair's cordial invitation. 

Afterwards Blair was advertised to speak at Mar- 
shall, in Saline County. On the day of his arrival 
an armed mob was organized to prevent him from 
speaking, and an armed body of Democrats swore 
he should. A collision occurred, resulting in a regu- 
lar pitched battle, in which several men lost their 
lives and others were badly injured. But Blair made 
his speech. 

One night he was speaking in Lucas Market Place, 
in St. Louis, when a man in the crowd, not twenty 
feet from the stand, pointed a revolver directly at 
him. Friendly hands interposed to turn the aim sky- 
ward. "Let him shoot, if he dares," said Blair, gaz- 
ing coolly at his would-be murderer; "if I am wrong, 
I ought to be shot, but this man is not the proper ex- 
ecutioner." The fellow was hustled from the audi- 
ence. 

Amid such scenes he toured the State from the 
Des Moines River, to the Arkansas line, and from 
the Mississippi to the mouth of the raging Kaw. 
The man who did that had a lion's heart in his breast. 

Courage is not synonymous with the quality of 
leadership, though necessary to it. Indeed, learning, 
eloquence, courage, talent, and genius all together 
do not make a leader. But whatever the quality is, 

14 



210 Oratory of the South 

people recognize it instinctively and inevitably follow 
the man who possesses it. Frank Blair was a natural 
leader. During his career there were liner scholars 
in Missouri than he, though he was an excellent 
scholar, a graduate from Princeton; there were more 
splendid orators, though he ranked with the most 
convincing and persuasive; there were profounder 
lawyers, though he stood high at the bar ; there were 
better mixers, though he was of cordial and winning 
manners ; there were men, perhaps, of stronger men- 
tal force, though he was amply endowed with brains, 
so good a judge of human nature as Abraham Lin- 
coln saying of him: "He has abundant talents"; 
there were men as brave, though he was of the brav- 
est; but as a leader he overtopped them all. 

Believing sincerely that human slavery was wrong 
per se, and that it was of most evil to the States where 
it existed, he fought it tooth and nail, not from sym- 
pathy for the negroes so much as from affection for 
the whites, and created the Republican party in Mis- 
souri before the Civil War — a most hazardous per- 
formance in that day and latitude. At its close, when, 
in his judgment, his party associates had become the 
oppressors of the people and the enemies of liberty, 
he left them, and lifting in his mighty arms the Dem- 
ocracy, which lay bleeding and swooning in the dust, 
he breathed into its nostrils the breath of life — an- 
other performance of extraordinary hazard. 

This man was of the stuff out of which martyrs 
are made, and he would have gone grimly, undaunt- 
edly, unflinchingly, and defiantly to the block, the 
scaffold, or the stake in defense of any cause which 
he considered just. Though he was imperious, tem- 
pestuous, dogmatic, and impetuous, though no danger 
could swerve him from the path of duty, though he 
gave tremendous blows to his antagonists and re- 
ceived many of the same kind, he had infinite com- 



Robert Minor Wallace 211 

passion for the helpless and the weak, and to the end 
his heart remained tender as a little child's. 

While from the day of his return from the Mexi- 
can War to the hour of his retirement from the Sen- 
ate he was in the forefront of every political battle 
in Missouri— and nowhere on earth were political 
wars waged with more ungovernable fury — such 
were his endearing qualities that the closing years 
of his life were placid as a summer's evening, and he 
died amid the lamentations of a mighty people. Re- 
publicans seemed to remember only the good he had 
done them, forgetting the injuries, while the Demo- 
crats forgot the injuries he had inflicted upon them 
and remembered only the invaluable service he had 
rendered. Union veterans named a Grand Army 
post for him; Confederates proudly call their boys 
Frank Blair, and his fellow-citizens, without regard 
to creed or party, erected his statue of heroic size in 
Forest Park to perpetuate his fame to coming gen- 
erations. 



STEPHEN F. AUSTIN AND SAM HOUSTON 

ROBERT MINOR WALLACE 

Congressman from Arkansas 

[Extract from a speech delivered in the House of Rep- 
resentatives on the occasion of the acceptance of statues of 
Austin and Houston from the State of Texas.] 

Mr. Speaker, we to-day formally accept from the 
State of Texas the statues of Stephen F. Austin and 
Sam Houston, epoch-makers in the history of the 
country. 

On his departure from Tennessee, under the 
shadow of a great sorrow, Sam Houston dwelled with 
the Indians for a season in Arkansas Territory. 



212 Oratory of the South 

Moses Austin traversed the same with chain and 
compass, Stephen, his son, following in his footsteps 
and sharing his hardships. Of Houston it is said he 
"was the most imposing in personal appearance of 
all Texans. His eagle eye read men at a glance. His 
majestic personality enabled him to control the ex- 
cited masses at critical periods when no other man 
could. His penetrating vision grasped the whole of 
Texas — her resources and capabilities of the present 
and future — a grasp that was only relaxed by death." 
And of Austin, "that he had more culture and pos- 
sessed a more refined and loftier spiritual image." 

Wars and treaties and history I shall leave largely 
to the historian and those inclined to thread the nar- 
rative here. Upon the brow of Houston, with his 
stern virtues and diversified occupations, I shall at- 
tempt to wreathe the laurel leaf. In private life he 
was gentle, chivalric, and courtly. In Texas he wore 
buckskin breeches and a Mexican blanket, which 
tempted General Jackson to remark: "There is one 
man at least in Texas of whom God Almighty, and 
not the tailor, had the making." With personal 
courage that never failed him, with humanity that 
never sought innocent blood, with honor unsullied 
by successes or reverses, he began and ended his life 
a benefactor of his race. 

He was not unlike the later Jackson. Mysterious, 
incomprehensibe to his foes, he won advantage at a 
move, victory at a blow. Sword and prayer were his 
weapons, and he mingled them with the lurid light- 
nings that played upon the battle cloud and thun- 
dered in the storm of war. Those who may have fol- 
lowed closely his career — first living in peace with, 
then battling against and again dwelling in exile with, 
the redman — must look with wonder on this strange, 
unfathomable character, romantic as it was daring, 



Robert Minor Wallace 213 

weird as it was bold, admirable as it was unconquer- 
able! 

Well may history rest his fame at San Jacinto. 
There culminated the struggle which divested Texas 
of a hostile foe, detained Santa Anna as a hostage 
for peace and independence, builded a republic and 
immortalized its builder. The more remote but not 
less important sequence was the annexation of Texas 
to the American Union. The Stars and Stripes 
floated over the halls of the Montezumas and the 
domain of our Republic was augmented by conces- 
sions of territory stretching away to the Rio Grande 
and Pacific ; and Mexico, then a mockery of civil gov- 
ernment, was constructed into a modern republic, wel- 
comed to the family of nations, and honored by the 
powers of the earth. A blue shaft, rising in broad 
stretches of magnificent environment at San Jacinto, 
and speaking through its granite silence the people's 
love for their patriot son, may lose its majesty and 
its strength, but the name wrought deep in its pol- 
ished shaft, but deeper wrought in the hearts and 
consciences of men, shall endure until God's hand 
shall rend the firmament and God's voice shall rock 
the earth, and in the tumult of dissolving nature 
time's last revolution "breaks on eternity's wave." 
Austin's idea, which prevailed for a time, was to 
establish a local State government under the Mexi- 
can constitution of 1824. Houston's idea was to es- 
tablish a republic or a state absolutely independent 
and defiant of the central Mexican government, with 
the ultimate object of annexation to the United 
States. The republic was established and modeled 
after our form of government. Houston was the 
first President. He found the young republic pledged 
to the payment of a debt of three million dollars. 
His administration fixed its eyes first on land robbers. 
Then a small impost duty was imposed, an ad val- 



214 Oratory of the South 

orem tax levied, and land scrip issued and put upon 
the market for sale. He kept peace with the enemies 
of the republic, and started it well on the way to a 
high and noble destiny. He was succeeded by Mira- 
beau Lamar, whose first official declaration was that 
the "sword should mark the boundaries of the re- 
public"; which at once incurred the hostility of the 
Mexicans and Indians alike. 

At the close of his administration the public debt 
had increased from three to eight millions, and 
Texas had a population of only fifty-five thousand. 
The popular will cried out for Houston, and he again 
became president. He at once inaugurated adminis- 
trative reforms to correct existing abuses, and at the 
end of his term in 1 844 saw his republic at peace with 
Mexico and the Indian tribes, and a cash balance 
in her treasury. As a statesman there was nothing 
of the inconoclast in his nature. On the contrary, 
he was of the type of creative, constructive publicists. 
If Austin laid the corner-stone, Houston erected the 
superstructure and fashioned into splendid propor- 
tions this magnificent structure of a republic and a 
State. He laid his impress there, and Texas will go 
down the years as the superb embodiment of his mar- 
tial spirit, the composite ideal of his statesmanship, 
and the fairest gem of his handiwork. 

Efforts on the part of Houston and others to an- 
nex Texas to the United States were thrice denied 
by this country. As a diplomat, Houston paid court 
to France and England, and otherwise exerted his 
subtle and powerful influence to stimulate the jeal- 
ousy of this country against any European nation 
that designed a foothold in the Western Hemisphere. 
Soon James K. Polk and the Democratic party es- 
poused the cause of annexation, and triumphed at 
the polls. Strange enough, when the final steps were 
taken in 1845 t0 annex Texas, Houston seemed to 



Robert Minor Wallace 215 

oppose or take no part in it. For this he was abused 
and denounced by his friends. In response to the 
matter of paying court to France and England, after- 
wards in a speech he illustrated his position as fol- 
lows: "Suppose," said he, "a charming lady has 
two suitors.. One of them, she is inclined to believe, 
would make the better husband, but is a little slow 
to make interesting propositions. Don't you think, 
if she were a skillful practitioner at Cupid's court, 
she would pretend that she loved the other 'feller' 
the best and be sure that her favorite would know it? 
If ladies are justified in making use of coquetry in se- 
curing their annexation to good and agreeable hus- 
bands, you must excuse me for making use of the same 
means to annex Texas to the United States." An- 
nexation was the ambition, the passion, of his life, 
His great heart beat with unmistakable emotion when 
he looked upon the "lone star" of his republic gleam- 
ing in the noble group that formed the coats of arms 
of the States of this Union ! But alas for the muta- 
bility of human success. The blight of war came in 
1 86 1, and hearing the signal guns proclaim the with- 
drawal of Texas from the Union he exclaimed: "My 
heart is broken!" and those who knew him best re- 
cord that Houston was never himself again. 

Mr. Speaker, I have seen part of a summer's sky 
overcast with cloud and the gentle showers fall and 
the raindrops sparkle as so many diamonds on tree 
and shrub and flower, and I believed it beautiful. 
I have fancied myriad forms in the strange phe- 
nomena of, the heavens, and believed it grand. I 
have looked on the mellow glow of sunset and be- 
lieved it challenged the utmost stretch of my fancy 
for the beautiful; but the most charming picture, 
perhaps, that may challenge the imagination is a 
shaft of light spanning from the effigies of earth to 
heaven, and human souls, loosed from their mortal 



216 Oratory of the South 

environment, ascending that shaft to the God who 
gave them. 

Let this be the vision we have of the great souls, 
now, perhaps, not less the idols of their eternal than 
erstwhile of their earthly homes. Let it be they abide 
in peace by the fountain of living waters and where 
the skies bend softest and the flowers bloom eternal. 
Noble and cultured Austin! Great and picturesque 
Houston ! By the work of this day we but recall the 
magic of thy genius, but review the pioneer pageant 
of thy march from cradle to grave. It has not been 
left for us to add one cubit to statures like gods, that 
descended and stood in the councils, moved the 
hearts, and molded the judgments of men. It has not 
been left for us to immortalize thy names, for beyond 
our feeble reach they are engraved on the tablets and 
shrined in the hearts of nations. It has not been left 
for us to wreathe thy brows with lintels that defy 
the touch of time, for the world has crowned them 
with laurels that shall endure forever. It has not 
been left for us to broaden the pedestals nor place 
the capstones on the pyramids of thy fame, for thy 
own hands have builded the one as broad as earth and 
the other as high as heaven. But it has been left for 
us to glory in the fact of birth in a land dowered with 
the knightly genius of thy patriotism and the peerless 
chivalry of thy deeds. Csesar nor Napoleon inspired 
not his armed legions with such spirit for war as thou 
hast wrought in thy countrymen for peace, nor waged 
such victories in battle as thou hast won in the forum, 
nor massed such power for oppression as thou hast 
arrayed for freedom, nor transmitted such glory to 
the nations as thy example to posterity ! 



Robert L. Henry 217 

TEXAS AND THE PANAMA CANAL 

ROBERT L. HENRY 

Congressman from Texas 

[The conclusion of a speech delivered at a banquet of the 
Houston business men, Houston, Tex., November i, 1901.] 

With reference to the Panama Canal, here is 
Texas in a most happy geographical position. With 
her 264,811 square miles of territory, more beauti- 
ful than the poetic vale of Cashmere, nestling against 
the throbbing bosom of the queenly Mexican Sea, 
with her four million bales of cotton, her five million 
cattle, three million horses, and three million sheep 
browsing upon and beautifying every hilltop and 
vale, she stands proudly in the parliament of States 
without a rival. Her great grain fields are the 
wonder of the universe. Her luscious fruits, many 
colored and richly laden minerals, and her marvel- 
ous yellow pines are of deep concern to the whole 
world. With all this prospect, we have room for 
millions of people yet to come. Our area is so vast 
that we could seat every person of this habitable 
globe in Texas in a comfortable chair, and give each 
one four feet for elbow room! Texas has been 
blessed with beneficent land policies beyond any other- 
State. Truly our land laws and homestead exemp- 
tions "have put the crown of industrial glory on her 
head and the rock of conscious independence beneath 
her feet." 

When this canal is created the entrepots of trade 
along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts will be the most 
marvelously busy ones this old world ever saw. Turn 
to the south and behold the rich deposits of iron, coal, 
minerals, and the gigantic forests of varied timbers 
the States of Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, Texas, 
and other States contain for the Oriental world. Cast 



2 IS Oratory of the South 

your eye northwestward into many States and let it 
rest upon the rich harvests of golden grain, ripened 
into a glorious fruitage, that must come down this 
way to reach the millions of other countries. 

Look around you in the sun-kissed South and be- 
hold the illimitable fields of cotton, bursting into seas 
of snowflakes, that must clothe the world. Feast 
your eyes upon the fertile valleys of the Mississippi, 
Red River, the wonderful Brazos lowlands and va- 
rious other streams of Texas, and contemplate, if you 
can, the rich cargoes that will come from their bosoms 
to freight the heavy laden ships as they pass 
along this Isthmian Way. Foreseeing the completion 
of this canal, standing here to-night, we can see this 
proud city with a hundred thousand souls for her in- 
habitants. We can look up the Brazos River, with 
her navigation assured, and see two million bales of 
cotton passing through your midst on their voyage 
to outside nations. Two millions more will hurry 
down the great railway systems converging here on 
their flight to the needs of other people. Cotton 
mills and factories and varied industries will rear 
their heads all over Texas and send their products 
humming this way. Untold millions of tons of 
freight will concentrate here to begin their glad voy- 
ages far and away. Many million gallons of oil, as 
they are shot heavenward by wild nature at Beau- 
mont, will be captured and hurried from this very 
midst to the four winds of the earth, proclaiming 
that Texas has solved the fjiel problem for all people 
and all climes. The markets of the world will de- 
mand even- gallon of oil produced by Texas, and 
mayhap many millions more will be needed. 

Verily, do these things give Texas a marvelously 
grand commercial and industrial aspect. Away with 
the narrow limits of a pent up Utica ! Down with 
the restrictive tariff and Chinese walls of protection ! 



Charles A. Culberson 219 

Let us out to the seas and grasp hands in free busi- 
ness intercourse with the millions of people every- 
where! Let us swing wide an "open door" to the 
world at large and demand an "open door" in re- 
turn ! Then, with this waterway established, future 
years may bring the rich plains of Canada into this 
Union of States. Our strong arms may some time 
peaceably encircle Mexico and Central America and 
erect them into self-governing States of this Union. 
With this consummation let us ning„away the islands 
of the seas and maverick herds of people there, aliens 
to our institutions and corroding to our body politic. 
Then, with the greatest republic ever possible in ages 
past and future, resting securely between the two 
mighty oceans beating against her, America will en- 
dure as the protector of freedom, human progress, 
and constitutional government "as long as the stars 
twinkle through the loops of time." 



TRIBUTE TO IRELAND 

CHARLES A. CULBERSON 

United States Senator from Texas 

[Address on St. Patrick's Day at Houston, Tex., March 
17, 1898.] 

This meeting is the culmination of the greatest 
Irish celebration this State has known, and the most 
remarkable assemblage of that people ever held 
within her borders; and when we look back upon 
the salient features of the history of Ireland we need 
not be surprised at this outpouring of her sons and 
sympathizers and this increasing interest in their 
affairs. 

From the beginning of her authentic annals, 
though without monuments and trophies to elevate 



220 Oratory of the South 

and inspire, and weighted throughout the ages with 
English oppression, the nobler aspirations of her 
people have been enlightenment and liberty. The 
earlier ages gave promise of these, and that the beau- 
tiful island, rich in valley and river and mountain, 
would endure as an independent and mighty nation. 
For three hundred years after the adoption of Chris- 
tianity, from the fifth to the eighth century, it at- 
tracted students from Britain and Gaul, sent mission- 
aries into the country now known as Western Europe, 
and became the nursery of science and civilization. 
No national or racial causes arrested this progress 
and destroyed this supremacy, but invaded by the 
Northmen, and, because of internal division and dis- 
sension, finally overrun by the English, the contest 
for more than seven hundred years has been not so 
much for intellectual and industrial advancement as 
for individual liberty and national independence. 
During this conflict, at which mankind has marveled, 
Celtic contributions to civilization have indeed been 
memorable, but no people, however great, ever rose 
to their full stature amid the environments and ex- 
actions of tyranny. 

Above all else they have done for the world, this 
struggle of Irishmen for freedom is the most benefi- 
cent and imperishable. Other peoples have fought 
nobly, other nations have written their deeds in death- 
less song and story, but it was reserved for the Irish 
to wage, for more than seven centuries, an unended 
battle for self-government, which is alike their afflic- 
tion and their glory. So unyielding, so constant, so 
heroic, have they been that the prophecy of the oracle 
should be fulfilled: "They may be in want, they may 
be in rags, they may be naked, but not a link of the 
British chain will be left clanking to their limbs." 
Fighting in tears and under the despot heel, the issue 
of the combat may be against them, yet amid the ruins 



Joseph W. Bailey 221 

they can proudly recall the past and contemplate its 
grandeur. What nation can boast a sweeter bard 
than Moore, or a greater revolutionary orator than 
O'Connell ? What people can point to a more daunt- 
less warrior than Brian Boru, a more masterful states- 
man than Parnell, or a nobler martyr than Emmet? 
What race can claim a loftier emblem than the sham- 
rock, a grander cause than home rule, or a more 
devout apostle than St. Patrick? 

Of Irish birth and extraction, affectionately at- 
tached to her traditions, proud of her immortal 
achievements, and yearning for her sovereignty and 
upbuilding, let us not despair of the future of Ire- 
land. Let us rather feel with her sweetest poet 
that 

"The star of the field, which so often hath pour'd 
Its beams on the battle, is set ; 
But enough of its glory remains on each sword 
To light us to victory yet." 



THE DIVISION OF TEXAS 

JOSEPH W. BAILEY 

United States Senator from Texas 

[Extract from a speech delivered in the United States 
Senate, January, 1906.] 

Throughout this discussion we have heard many 
and varied comments upon the magnitude of Texas. 
Some Senators have expressed^ a friendly solicitude 
that we would some day avail ourselves of the privi- 
lege accorded to us by the resolutions under which we 
entered the Union and divide our State into five. 
Other Senators have seemed to think it a just ground 
of complaint that I consider it my duty to oppose 
the consolidation of the two Territories into one 



222 Oratory of the South 

State, without advocating a division for Texas. The 
same reasons that will satisfy my solicitous friends 
that their hope for the division of Texas can never 
be realized will also relieve me of a charge of incon- 
sistency which has more than once been insinuated 
against me in the course of this debate. 

Mr. President, if Texas had contained a popula- 
tion in 1845 sufficient to have justified her admission 
as five States, it is my opinion that she would have 
been so admitted then, because the all-absorbing slav- 
ery question, which happily no longer vexes us, but 
which completely dominated American politics at that 
time, would have led to that result. I will even go 
further than that ; I will say that if Texas were now 
five States there would not be five men in either State 
who would seriously propose the consolidation into 
one. But, sir, Texas is not divided now, and under 
the providence of God she will not be divided until 
the end of time. Her position is exceptional, and 
excites in the minds of all her citizens a just and 
natural pride. She is now the greatest of all the 
States in area, and certain to become the greatest of 
all in population, wealth and influence; with such a 
primacy assured her she could not be expected to sur- 
render it, even to obtain increased representation in 
this body. 

But, Mr. President, while from her proud emi- 
nence to-day she looks upon a future as bright with 
promise as ever beckoned a people to follow where 
fate and fortune lead, it is not so much the promise of 
the future as it is the memory of the glorious past 
which appeals to her against division. She could 
partition her fertile valleys and broad prairies, she 
could apportion her thriving towns and growing 
cities, she could distribute her splendid population 
and wonderful resources, but she could not divide 
the fadeless glory of those days that are past and 



Joseph W. Bailey 223 

gone. To which of her daughters, sir, could she as- 
sign, without irreparable injustice to all the others, 
the priceless inheritance of the Alamo, Goliad, and 
San Jacinto ? To which could she bequeath the name 
of Houston, Austin, Fannin, Bowie, and Crockett? 
Sir, the fame of these men, and their less illustrious 
but not less worthy comrades, cannot be severed. 
Their names are written upon the tablets of her 
grateful memory, so that all time shall not efface 
them. The story of their mighty deeds, which res- 
cued Texas from a condition of a despised and op- 
pressed Mexican province and made her a free and 
independent republic, still rouses the blood of her 
men like the sound of a trumpet, and we would not 
forfeit the right to repeat it to our children for 
many additional seats in this august assembly. 

The world has never seen a sublimer courage or a 
more unselfish patriotism than that which illuminates 
almost every page in the early history of Texas. 
Students may know more about other battlefields, but 
none is consecrated with the blood of braver men 
than those who fell at Goliad. Historians may not 
record it as one of the decisive battles of the world, 
but the victory of the Texans at San Jacinto is des- 
tined to exert a greater influence upon the happiness 
of the human race than all the conflicts that estab- 
lished or subverted the petty kingdoms of the ancient 
world. Poets have not yet immortalized it with their 
enduring verse, but the Alamo is more resplendent 
with her heroic sacrifice than was Thermopylae itself, 
because while "Thermopylae had its messenger of 
defeat, the Alamo had none." 

Mr. President, if I might be permitted to borrow 
an apostrophe to liberty and union, pronounced by a 
distinguished Senator, I would say of Texas: "She 
is one and inseparable, now and forever." 



224 Oratory of the South 

LOUISIANA 

THOMAS J. KERNAN 

Of the New Orleans (La.) Bar 

[Response to the toast, "The State of Louisiana," delivered 
at the reception given the officers of the U. S. S. Louisiana, 
at New Orleans, January, 1907.] 

Louisiana ! The soft, liquid music of that sweet 
name "steals o'er my spirit like a May day break- 
ing" and throws around my soul a magic spell of love 
and loyalty that blends in one the love of mother, 
wife, and children. I count myself thrice happy that 
my first breath was drawn from Louisiana's balmy 
air, and thrice blessed that my head shall find at last 
its final resting-place upon her tender bosom. She 
was of foreign birth, and the mingled strains of 
France and Spain still course through her children's 
veins. So strong has been the impress of this alien 
parentage upon her laws, her customs, and her people 
that we are sometimes jocularly told that it is time 
Lousiana should cease to be a province of France and 
apply for admission into the union of American 
States. 

We admit that Louisiana was the Republic's first 
foreign possession, but we claim for her now the 
place of a favorite daughter in Columbia's innermost 
family circle. If there was ever doubt of this, it has 
been dispelled by her selection as the name of 
the queen of the American navy that so grandly bears 
the proud name of Louisiana in these waters to-day. 

To me there is no more entrancing chapter in the 
history of the world than that which records the 
titanic struggle between France and England for the 
mastery of this vast continent. It began almost with 
its first discovery, and ended only when Napoleon 
sold and Jefferson bought what France could no 



Thomas J. Kernan 225 

longer hold and our Republic could no longer do 
without. Both peoples had bravely dared the blank 
mystery of Atlantic waters and had gallantly tempted 
the fascinating and alluring dangers of the lonely 
and enchanted forest. Both dreamt of wealth untold 
and of empire unbounded; and in their efforts to 
realize these dreams there was unfolded here a hu- 
man drama of heroism and romance unmatched in 
history or in fiction. 

How absorbingly interesting it is to watch that 
straggling and struggling line of hardy English pio- 
neers that clung so long and so tenaciously to the bar- 
ren and storm-swept shore of the Atlantic ; and after- 
wards poured over the blue mountains of the Appa- 
lachian range to hew an empire out of the forest and 
to fill the great valley of the Mississippi with teem- 
ing life and stirring action ! 

How equally interesting it is to observe that other 
thin line, manned by gallant Frenchmen, that but 
scantily fringed the frozen shores of the St. Law- 
rence and the lakes and planted the fleur-de-lis of 
France at Quebec and Montreal ; to note how soon so 
many of the sun-loving Latins forsook those uncon- 
genial northern climes and found their way down the 
sullen Mississippi to the Mediterranean of the West, 
"where blooms perpetual summer" ! Here in this 
climate, soft as a mother's smile, and on this soil, 
fruitful as God's love, they planted the French col- 
ony from which has grown the Louisiana of to-day — 
our own, our native land — the land of love and 
charm and beauty. 

"Thy very weeds are beautiful, thy waste 
More rich than other climes' fertility." 

Despite Louisiana's foreign origin and her alien 
laws, we, her people, are not aliens, and yield to 
none in patriotism or in loyalty to our common coun- 

15 



226 Oratory of the South 

try. Although we may have had other flags in the 
past, Old Glory is our only flag to-day; and we be- 
hold in those silken folds and streaming splendor the 
blended glories of all the flags of all our great and 
gallant ancestors — the Royal George of England, 
the flower flag of France, the glittering green of Ire- 
land, the orange and red of Spain, and, last and dear- 
est, the Conquered Banner. Old Glory now stands 
for them all, and to its defense we of Louisiana do 
here, now and forever, pledge our lives, our fortunes, 
and our sacred honor. 

Louisiana to-day again gladly welcomes and 
proudly honors her namesake, Louisiana. In her 
brave array of gallant officers and men she recog- 
nizes a devoted band of true Louisianians into whose 
brave and chivalrous keeping she commits her sacred 
name with the serene confidence that they will keep 
it ever bright and stainless, and that, when their gal- 
lant ship bears that loved name seaward down the 
Great River, the flags and the names of the Union 
and of Louisiana will ever have increase of fame and 
honor on all the seas she sails. 



THE CITY OF SHREVEPORT 

EDWARD H. RANDOLPH 

Of the Shreveport (La.) Bar 

[An address delivered upon the occasion of laying the 
corner-stone of the new City Hall of Shreveport, January 
2, 1908.] 

Fellow-citizens of Shreveport: 

In the olden times all days of pleasure, all lucky 
days, were marked on the calendar with a white 
stone. To-day we mark as a lucky one in the calen- 
dar of Shreveport, because we place in position the 



Edward H. Randolph 227 

white stone which is the corner-stone of the new city 
hall. Henceforth let it be considered a lucky day, 
a day of pleasure, and of good omen. At the same 
time, as we are erecting this edifice for the service of 
the people and dedicate it to the uses of the city gov- 
ernment, let us as citizens dedicate ourselves to the 
service of our city in all things that go to make 
up good citizenship and patriotic pride in Shreveport, 
so that, as the citizens of Rome proudly said, "Ro- 
manus sum," we can say with pride, "Shreveport is 
some." 

On this occasion we should also keep in memory 
our forefathers who established the city in this 
place — beautiful for situation, at the confluence of 
Cross Bayou and Red River, high upon the hills, se- 
cure against the ravages of the waters, with ideal 
conditions for natural drainage and health, across 
the streams the teeming lowlands rich as the shores 
of Egypt's Nile, and to the south and east of us the 
undulating, salubrious uplands. The early founders, 
mooring their boats to these bold uplands, then the 
Ultima Thule of navigation, were guided by a div- 
ination that here was the place to found a city. It 
is not a vain piece of boasting for us to say that the 
spirit of these original founders has been with us, 
and is still with us, to make the city worthy of its 
noble natural advantages. Let it not be forgotten, 
though, that the growth and development and pro- 
gress of the city has been from the beginning attended 
with constant toil and effort. The first navigators 
who dropped their anchors here were not lotus- 
eaters seeking ease and rest, but they and their de- 
scendants have been men of restless energy and brave 
hearts undaunted by reverses or failure. 

And be' it remembered that Shreveport has had 
many vicissitudes and depressions. She has been 
through wars and pestilence, failure and success, pe- 



--S Oratory of the South 

riods of buoyancy and periods of gloom, but she has 
never been cast down — the nearer she bends to the 
ground it is but to upgather herself, like the invincible 
wrestler Antaeus, and with renewed strength from 
her contact with Mother Earth overthrows all di fa- 
culties and marches forward on her career. There- 
fore in the bright lexicon of youth, which fame has 
reserved for this young citv, there is no such word as 
Fail! 

For you must not forget that this is still a young 
city. "Within the memory of men still living 
Shreveport was a straggling village lying like a 
fringe along the banks of the river. The spot where 
we now stand a small forest or a waste place sepa- 
rating the town proper from the mellifluous suburb 
of Mugginsville, beyond which stood, outside the 
town, an isolated store or two noted for deeds of 
outlawry. Within the same memories no railroad 
entered the city 7 of Shreveport, and as the steamboat 
rounded the bend at Fort Humbug (where the new 
Cotton Belt bridge now spans the river), in all its 
bravery of grace and power heading for the wharf, 
meanwhile the strains of that most soul-stirring mu- 
sical instrument, the calliope, perched on top of the 
boat sounding out its echoes for miles around, the 
whole population rushed to the riverside in welcome. 
Within the same memories there was no paid fire de- 
partment, but when the dreadful note of the fire bell 
broke through the night everybody in town rushed 
out to witness and encourage the gallant and self- 
sacrificing efforts of the volunteer firemen. Within 
the same memories Silver Lake was in reality water 
so clear that as you gazed into it from the heights 
near Fort Humbug it was like a silver mirror. 
Within the same memories most of the lights were 
oil lamps fastened to posts at intervals from one to 
ten blocks, and the street car facilities were furnished 



Edward H. Randolph 229 

by a single track running from Spring street out 
Texas street to the corner of Jordan — the last car 
with great regularity passing out at nine o'clock. 

In recalling these incidents it is almost inconceiv- 
able that within so brief a period the great transfor- 
mation has taken place that has made our city a great 
trade center where over forty passenger trains move 
in and out each day, not to mention the countless 
freight cars; that has established its warehouses, 
compresses, stores, factories, banks, workshops, 
its' miles of paved streets and sidewalks, typifying 
with their smoothness and strength the grace and 
solidity of the population; its means of quick com- 
munication, either bodily or mentally, its "sky- 
scrapers," its abundant supply of water, its match- 
less brilliancy of lighting the night, its thoroughly 
organized municipal government, its public build- 
ings, its schoolhouses, its homes, and its numerous 
places of worship. 

The period has been brief and our achievement 
has been great because we are in our youth. Do not 
forget that Shreveport is not yet seventy years old. 
Therefore let us enjoy our youth and nobly dare to 
do greater things than in the past, but let us not for- 
get that youth has its perils and may go at too swift 
a pace. Is it not true that the faults we have and 
the mistakes we have made could be fairly laid to the 
hot blood of youth and headlong rush to material 
prosperity? If so, let us occasionally stop and con- 
sider and invite our souls, remembering that with 
success and prosperity of a town comes its responsi- 
bilities. 

We are literally on a hill and our light can- 
not be hid. No city lives to itself any more than 
man can live to himself. Let us not weigh every- 
thing in the balance of trade, because we know that 
all these things are as dust unless they are put to 



230 Oratory of the South 

noble uses. Not once or twice only has Shreveport 
in her history set the standard for high citizenship — 
let her continue ! 

Indeed in this ceremony to-day there is the 
prophecy of a greater and a more substantial Shreve- 
port. With the ending of the old year we are ring- 
ing out the old and ringing in the new. The old city 
hall building which occupied this site, with its mixed 
construction of brick and wood, its somewhat flimsy 
architecture, served its purpose, and let us be grate- 
ful to it; but as this building of stone and brick, the 
future home of the city government and the heart of 
our city, rises in its strength and majestic beauty 
standing four square to all the winds that blow, as it 
rises high in its beauty until it shall be first in the city 
to catch the rays of the morning sun and the last to 
redden under its kiss as it sinks below the horizon, 
so may our dear and much loved Shreveport stand 
secure and strong in its eminence, not only for ma- 
terial wealth, but for the character of its men and 
women. 



EULOGY OF CHARLES SUMNER 



LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR 

Member of Congress from Mississippi, 1857-61, and from 
1873-77; United States Senator, 1877-85; appointed 
an Associated Justice of the Supreme Court in 1888. 

[Condensed from a speech delivered in the House of Rep- 
resentatives, April 28, 1874.] 

Strange as the assertion may seem, impossible as 
it would have been ten years ago to make it, it is not 
the less true that to-day Mississippi regrets the death 
of Charles Sumner, and sincerely unites in paying 
honor to his memory. Not because of the splendor 



Lucius Q. C. Lamar 231 

of his intellect, though in him was extinguished one 
of the brightest of the lights which have illumined 
the councils of the Government for nearly a quarter 
of a century ; not because of the high culture, the ele- 
gant scholarship, and the varied learning which re- 
vealed themselves so clearly in all his public efforts 
as to justify the application to him of Johnson's fe- 
licitous expression, "He touched nothing which he 
did not adorn" ; not this, though these are qualities 
by no means, it is feared, so common in public places 
as to make their disappearance in a single instance 
a matter of indifference, but because of those pecu- 
liar and strongly marked moral traits of character 
which gave the coloring to the whole tenor of his 
singularly dramatic public career; traits which made 
him for a long period to a large portion of his coun- 
trymen the object of as deep and passionate hostility 
as to another he was one of enthusiastic admiration, 
and which are not the less the cause that now unites 
all these parties, ever so widely differing, in a com- 
mon sorrow to-day over his lifeless remains. 

Charles Sumner was born with an instinctive love 
of freedom, and was educated from his earliest in- 
fancy to the belief that freedom is the natural and 
indefeasible right of every intelligent being having 
the outward form of man. In him, in fact, this 
creed seems to have been more than a doctrine im- 
bibed from teachers or a result of education. To 
him it was a grand intuitive truth, inscribed in blaz- 
ing letters upon the tablet of his inner consciousness, 
to deny which would have been, for him to deny that 
he himself existed. And along with this all-controll- 
ing love of freedom he possessed a moral sensibility 
keenly intense and vivid, a conscientiousness which 
would never permit him to swerve the breadth of a 
hair from what he pictured to himself as the path of 
duty. Thus were combined in him the characteristics 



232 Oratory of the South 

which have in all ages given to religion her martyrs, 
and to patriotism her self-sacrificing heroes. 

To a man thoroughly permeated and imbued with 
such a creed, and animated and constantly actuated 
by such a spirit of devotion, to behold a human being 
or a race of human beings restrained of their natural 
right to liberty for no crime by him or them com- 
mitted, was to feel all the belligerent instincts of his 
nature roused to combat. The fact was to him a 
wrong which no logic could justify. It mattered not 
how humble in the scale of rational existence the sub- 
ject of this restraint might be, how dark his skin, 
or how dense his ignorance. Behind all that lay for 
him the great principle that liberty is the birthright 
of all humanity, and that every individual of every 
race who has a soul to save is entitled to the freedom 
which may enable him to work out his salvation. 
Formidable as were the difficulties in the way of the 
practical enforcement of his great principle, he held 
none the less that it must sooner or later be enforced, 
though institutions and constitutions should have to 
give way alike before it. 

It was certainly a gracious act toward the South — 
though unhappily it jarred upon the sensibilities of 
the other extreme of the Union, and estranged from 
him the great body of his political friends — to pro- 
pose to erase from the banners of the national army 
the mementoes of the bloody internecine struggle 
which might be regarded as assailing the pride or 
wounding the sensibilities of the Southern people. 
That proposal will never be forgotten by that people 
so long as the name of Charles Sumner lives in the 
memory of man. But, while it touched the heart of 
the South and elicited her profound gratitude, her 
people would not have asked of the North such an 
act of self-renunciation. Conscious that they them- 
selves were animated by devotion to constitutional 



Lucius Q. C. Lamar 233 

liberty, and that the brightest pages of history are 
replete with evidences of the depth and sincerity of 
that devotion, they cannot but cherish the recollec- 
tions of sacrifice endured, the battles fought, and the 
victories won in defense of their hapless cause. And 
respecting, as all true and brave men must respect, 
the martial spirit with which the men of the North 
vindicated the integrity of the Union and their de- 
votion to the principles of human freedom, they do 
not ask, they do not wish, the North to strike the 
mementoes of her heroism and victory from either 
records or monuments or battle-flags. They would 
rather that both sections should gather up the glories 
won by each section, not envious, but proud of each 
other, and regard them a common heritage of Ameri- 
can valor. Let us hope that future generations, 
when they remember the deeds of heroism and de- 
votion done on both sides, will speak, not of Northern 
prowess and Southern courage, but of the heroism, 
fortitude, and courage of Americans in a war of 
ideas ; a war in which each section signalized its con- 
secration to the principles, as each understood them, 
of American liberty and of the Constitution received 
from their fathers. 

Would that the spirit of the illustrious man whom 
we lament to-day could speak from the grave to 
both parties to this deplorable conflict in tones which 
should reach each and every heart throughout this 
broad territory: "My countrymen, know one another, 
and you will love one another!" 



234 Oratory of the South 

TRIBUTE TO LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR 

WARREN A. CANDLER 

Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South; 
Some time President of Emory College, Oxford, Ga. 

[Extract from an address at the funeral of Justice La- 
mar, in Mulberry Street Church, Macon, Ga., January 27, 
1893.] 

From his youth up Judge Lamar was a man of 
courage. He had the courage of his convictions 
because he had convictions. All the traditions of 
his college life (and the village of Oxford is full 
of them) represent him as being, from the first, 
an honest seeker after truth and a fearless defender 
of it. 

Very profound are the words of Jesus: "And ye 
shall know the truth and the truth shall make you 
free." There is no freedom worthy of the name 
which is not freedom by the truth, and for him who 
seeks and finds and loves and holds the truth, there 
is neither fear nor bondage in this or any other 
world. For a public man living under a constitu- 
tional government by the people, there can be no 
worse fall nor dire disaster than the loss of faith 
in the feasibility of the truth. When he loses this 
faith he instantly becomes the unhappy victim of 
tormenting fears which paralyze his manhood and 
impel him to the adoption of all manner of unworthy 
and belittling expedients to maintain his place and 
power. Then follows incapacity to recognize the 
truth. His eye is no longer single. The light which 
was in him becomes darkness ; and how great is that 
darkness ! Fightings without and fears within sub- 
vert the heroic repose of lofty character, and the 
devices of the temporizer displace the methods of 
straightforward, manly independence. 

Such was not Mr. Justice Lamar. His whole life 



Warren A. Candler 235 

seemed to speak the sentiment of Emerson's words: 
"I look upon the simple and childish virtues of 
veracity and honesty as the root of all that is sublime 
in character." This high faith simplified all ques- 
tions which he was called to consider, disentangled 
all issues from the influence of personal interest and 
political expediency, and left him free to determine 
the line of his action by great principles of right, from 
which with him there was no appeal. This faith was 
the basis of his unfaltering courage in the discharge 
of public duty He believed in the power of the truth 
over the people, and with almost reckless self-aban- 
don dared to follow the truth as it was given to him 
to see it. For this cause more than once he took 
positions and made public utterances which imperiled 
his popularity. When assailed, he took his appeal 
to the people, not with the methods of a skillful 
manager, but with the daring of an honest man moved 
by the impulses of conscious rectitude. And the 
people, when they heard him in defense of his action, 
approved him. 

That he was ever animated by the spirit which I 
have described, none who knew him well, none who 
are familiar with his record, will question. I recall 
with great vividness his eloquent commendation of 
this faith to the young men of the country in the sum- 
mer of 1890, when he delivered the annual address 
before the Alumni Association of Emory College. 
He alluded to his long experience in public life at the 
national capital, and to the prevalent opinion that 
other influences than those of- right and truth often- 
times control there, and said substantially this : 
"After all is allowed that can be justly claimed con- 
cerning the influence of money and management upon 
the determination of national affairs, I have always 
observed that when great questions call for solution, 
and high interests are at stake, manhood and truth 



236 Oratory of the South 

and right outweigh all opposing forces. Devotion to 
principle is not yet a vain thing in the Republic ; vir- 
tue is not obsolete in the councils of the nation." 
Such an utterance, from such a man, should rebuke 
the unmanly despair to which so many are so strongly 
tempted, and should quicken the courage of all the 
young men in our land. If the eloquent lips upon 
which rests the seal of silence to-day could speak 
to us, would they not again proclaim this high and 
simple creed of political faith: "Truth is better than 
falsehood, honesty better than policy, courage better 
than cowardice. Truth is omnipotent and public 
justice certain"? 

And now at last this stainless gentleman, this as- 
tute statesman, this incorruptible judge, this humble 
Christian, has gone to his long home, and the 
mourners go about the streets. Multiplied thou- 
sands in every walk of life and in every section of 
his country bless his name to-day with tearful bene- 
dictions. Mississippi, the State of his adoption, 
mourns for him as her Chevalier Bayard, the idol 
of her heart. Georgia, his native State, who in his 
long absence has never ceased to love him and to wish 
him back home, presses her dead son to her bosom 
with unutterable sorrow, disconsolate as Rachel re- 
fusing to be comforted. All the nation mourns this 
knightly man, who lived without fear and died with- 
out reproach. Men of all parties lament him as a 
patriot whose lofty devotion to the country knew 
no narrow sectional limits, and whose loyalty to truth 
was affected by no partisan bias. All men mourn 
him as a brave, brotherly soul by whose life the sum 
of human goodness was increased, and by whose 
death the stock of earthly virtue is visibly diminished. 

Thank God that he has lived and labored among 
us! Thank God for the triumph he has won, and 
that at last, when he could do no more for his country 



George W. Bain 237 

and his race, he was permitted to come home to die. 
Sweet be his sleep, in his sepulcher on the banks of 
the Ocmulgee singing sadly to the sea, until the earth 
and the sea shall give up their dead, and God shall 
wipe away all tears from our eyes, and there shall 
be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying nor any 
more pain! 

LIFE LESSONS 

GEORGE W. BAIN 

Lyceum Lecturer, of Lexington, Ky. 

[Extract from an address to the graduating class of the 
Peirce Business College, at Philadelphia, December 18, 
1890.] 

All the forces and elements of society are teachers, 
and the world is a tuition. The birth of an infant into 
this world is its matriculation into a university where 
it graduates in successive degrees, and in this great 
school of life, where we are continually influenced 
by what touches us, the important question is, How 
will you be influenced by what touches you? How 
will you touch others who may be fed by your full- 
ness, starved by your emptiness, uplifted by your 
righteousness, or tainted by your sins ? While your 
success in commercial life is a matter of great interest 
to you, it is also important that you prove yourselves 
to be Jonathans to your friends, Ruths to your 
kindred, Jacobs to your families, Gideons to your 
country, and true to God. You go out from here 
to-morrow to take hold of the throttle valve of com- 
merce and help to build up the commercial glory of 
our country, but what will you do to help build up its 
moral grandeur? For, remember, the question is 
not whether we have country enough to home the 
world, soil rich enough to feed the world, and re- 



23 S Oratory of the South 

sources enough to run the machinery of the world, 
but have we morals enough to save the Republic? 
Among the first of moral qualities a young person 
needs, is industry. "By the sweat of thy face shalt 
thou eat bread" has in it more sweet bread than all 
your luck. On this ancient law the greatest successes 
of the world have been based. On this, Abraham 
Lincoln stood splitting rails, and wedged himself to 
the highest office in the gift of the Republic; on this, 
Shakespeare stood weaving wool, and wove for him- 
self a fame immortal; on this, James A. Garfield 
tramped a tow-path with no company but an honest 
mule, but that tow-path led on to the White House 
in Washington. Do not be lazy. I saw a man once 
who really looked so lazy it seemed to rest me to look 
at him. The man or woman who lives in this age 
of the world and lives in idleness should have been 
born in some other age. When ox-teams crept across 
the plains and stage-coaches went five miles an hour, 
idleness may have been in some kind of harmony 
with the age; but now, when a man takes breakfast 
one day in New York, dinner next day in Chicago, 
and supper the next day out on the plains, when tele- 
phone and telegraph send news faster than light flies, 
when cotton picked from the stalk one day is made 
into a suit of clothes the next, the idler is out of place. 
He is born too late and, as Dr. Talmadge says, "he 
will die too late." Carlyle says: "The race of life 
has become intense ; the runners are treading on each 
others' heels. Woe be to that man who stops to 
tie his shoe-strings." Some young men think because 
they are wealthy they can afford to be idle; but no 
man or woman able to work can be happy in idle- 
ness — the brightest, broadest-winged angel in heaven 
could not be happy in idleness. His wings were 
given him to soar eternity with, and he can only be 
happy as he does his appointed work. 



George W. Bain 239 

Take care of your principles, and to do this start 
right and keep right. I heard of a traveler who said 
to a wayside farmer, "How far do you call it to Phil- 
adelphia?" The farmer replied, "About twenty-five 
thousand miles, the way you are going; if you turn 
and go the other way, it is fourteen miles." There 
is a wonderful difference in the ways of life. If you 
start right and keep right, no matter where you start 
from, you will end right. Go find me the poorest 
boy in this city; let him lay his hand on his heart 
and pledge me he will be industrious, honest, econo- 
mical, and sober, and in twenty years hence you will 
find him honored and "well to do" in life. Boys, 
are any of you poor? Never mind poverty The 
rich men of to-day were poor boys thirty years ago. 
The great men come out of cabins, as a rule. Colum- 
bus was a weaver, Hally was a soapmaker, Homer 
was a beggar, and Franklin, whose name will live 
while lightning blazes on a cloud, came from the 
printer's desk. Fifteen years ago I rode horseback 
through Hardin and La Rue Counties, Kentucky. 
We call that the land of ticks and lizards. The soil 
is very poor, so poor that it will not raise black-eye 
peas unless you take them without the eyes. Riding 
along that day I came upon a spot of rank weeds 
where the soil had been made rich by the decay of 
an old cabin that once stood there. Out of that 
cabin years ago came a lean, lank white-headed boy. 
If ever a boy came from abject poverty that one did. 
When only seven years of age he would walk to 
Hodgenville with a basket of eggs to sell. The boys 
laughed at him. They said his clothes were like 
Joseph's, because so many colors. But he was indus- 
trious, honest, and sober. After a while he was old 
enough to leave home, so he went down the Ohio and 
Mississippi rivers on a flatboat. Then he returned 
and crossing over into Indiana — he there split rails 



240 Oratory of the South 

awhile; then on to Illinois, where he practiced law; 
then on to the Presidential chair, and in his death he 
bore the shackles of four million slaves and linked 
his name with that of Liberty. I thank God we live 
in a land where a boy can go from a tow-path, a tan- 
yard, or a rail-cut to the presidency of a republic. 

To those traits I have named, add thoroughness. 
We are told that the moss Mungo Park brought 
from the wilds of Africa was as perfect as that 
which inspired the song of "The Old Oaken 
Bucket." Go out on the mountain's crag where no 
foot has yet reached and get the wild flower that 
leans its pale cheek against the snow — you will find 
it perfect as the hundred-leaved rose of the garden 
plot. Take the telescope, find the most distant star, 
and you will find it as perfect as the star of the even- 
ing, and both singing as they shine, "The hand that 
made us is divine." God teaches us thoroughness 
in every flower that blooms, every bird that sings, 
and every star that shines. To all these helpful 
graces add the most helpful of all, faith in God and 
the immortality of the human soul. Mr. Ingersoll 
may criticize religion, but show me the genuine old 
Christian into whose mind thoughts have come, lifted 
all his life through the Bible, and I will show you 
a scene, not like the one he painted over the graves 
of his brother and friend, which reminded me of 
the poor bird, driven by the storm far out on the 
sea, trying to rest its weary wing on the crest of the 
wind-driven wave, but I will show you an Indian 
summer scene, with rosy clouds going down on the 
horizon shell-tinted with glories of the setting sun. 
Mr. Ingersoll may say, "You cannot follow your 
Christian man through the night of death and tell 
me his fate in the eternal morning." That may be 
true, but I can say this: "If there is another world 
he's in bliss. If not, he's made the best of this," 



Fitzhugh Lee 241 

THE FLAG OF THE UNION FOREVER 

FITZHUGH LEE 

Formerly Governor of Virginia 

[A speech delivered at a dinner of the Hibernian Society 
of Philadelphia, September 17, 1887.] 

You have all heard of George Washington and 
his little hatchet. The other day I heard a story that 
was a little variation upon the original, and I am 
going to take up your time for a minute by repeating it 
to you. It was to this effect: Old Mr. Washington 
and Mrs. Washington, the parents of George, found 
on one occasion that their supply of soap had become 
exhausted and so they decided to make some family 
soap. They made the necessary arrangements and 
gave the requisite instructions to the family servant. 
After an hour or so the servant returned and re- 
ported to them that he could not make that soap. 
"Why not," he was asked, "haven't you got all the 
materials?" "Yes," he replied, "but there is some- 
thing wrong." The old folks proceeded to investi- 
gate, and they found they had actually got the ashes 
of the little cherry tree George had cut down with 
his hatchet, and there was no lye in it. 

Now, I assure you, there is no "lie" in what I say 
to you this afternoon, and that is, that I thank God 
for the sun of the Union which, once obscured, is now 
again in the full stage of its glory, and that its light 
is shining over Virginia as well as over the rest of 
the country. We have had our differences. I do 
not see, upon reading history, how they could well 
have been avoided, because they resulted from dif- 
ferent constructions of the Constitution, which was 
the helm of the ship of the Republic. Virginia con- 
strued it one way. Pennsylvania construed it an- 
other, and they could not settle their differences; so 
16 



242 Oratory of the South 

they went to war, and Pennsylvania, I think, probably 
got a little the best of it. 

The sword, at any rate, settled the controversy. 
But that is behind us. We have now a great and 
glorious future in front of us, and it is Virginia's 
duty to do all that she can to promote the honor and 
glory of this country. We fought to the best of 
our ability for four years; and it would be a great 
mistake to assume that you could bring men from 
their cabins, from their plows, from their houses and 
from their families to make them fight as they fought 
in that contest unless they were fighting for a belief. 
Those men believed that they had the right construc- 
tion of the Constitution, and that a State that volun- 
tarily entered the Union could voluntarily withdraw 
from it. They did not fight for Confederate 
money — it was not worth ten cents a yard. They 
fought for what they thought was a proper con- 
struction of the Constitution. They were defeated. 
They acknowledged their defeat. They came back 
to their homes, and there they are going to stay. But 
if we are to continue prosperous, if this country, 
stretching from the Gulf to the Lakes and from 
ocean to ocean, is to be mindful of its own best in- 
terests, in the future we will have to make conces- 
sions and compliances, we will have to bear with each 
other and to respect each other's opinions. If all 
the people of different sections had been known to 
each other, or had been thrown together in business 
or social communication, the fact would have been 
recognized at the outset, as it is to-day, that there 
are just as good men in Maine as there are in Texas, 
and just as good men in Texas as there are in Maine. 
Human nature is everywhere the same; and when 
intestine strifes occur, we will doubtless be able by 
a conservative, pacific course to pass smoothly over 
the rugged, rocky edges, and the old Ship of State 



Joseph Wheeler 243 

will be brought into a safe, commodious, Constitu- 
tional harbor with the flag of the Union floating over 
her, and there it will remain. 



THE AMERICAN SOLDIER 

JOSEPH WHEELER 

Brigadier-General of the United States Army and hero 
of two wars; popularly known as "Fighting Joe" 
Wheeler; some time member of Congress from 
Alabama. 

[Extract from a speech delivered at a banquet of the Con- 
federate Veteran Camp of New York, New York City, Jan- 
uary 19, 1898.] 

History has many heroes whose martial renown 
has fired the world, whose daring and wonderful 
exploits have altered the boundaries of nations and 
changed the very face of the earth. To say noth- 
ing of the warriors of Biblical history and Homeric 
verse, as the ages march along every great nation 
leaves us the glorious memory of some unique char- 
acter, such as Alexander, Hannibal, or Caesar. Even 
the wild hordes of northern Europe and the barbaric 
nations of the East had their grand military leaders 
whose names will ever live on history's pages, to be 
eclipsed only by that of Napoleon, the man of des- 
tiny, who, as a military genius, stands alone and un- 
rivaled: "Grand, gloomy, peculiar, he sat upon the 
throne, a sceptered hermit, wrapped in the solitude 
of his awful originality." 

The medieval ages gave us noble examples of de- 
votedness and chivalry; but it belonged to the Ameri- 
can Republic, founded and defended by Freedom's 
sons, to give to the world the noblest type of warrior; 
men in whom martial renown went hand in hand with 
the noblest of virtues; men who united in their own 



244 Oratory of the South 

characters the highest military genius with the loftiest 
patriotism, the most daring courage with the gentlest 
courtesy, the most obstinate endurance with the ut- 
most self-sacrifice, the genius of a Caesar with the 
courage and purity of a Bayard. Patriotism and 
love of liberty, expanding and thriving in the atmos- 
phere of free America, added a refining touch to the 
martial enthusiasm of our forefathers and elevated 
the character of the American soldier to a standard 
never attained by fighting men of any other age or 
nation. 

Volumes would never do justice to the valorous 
achievements of George Washington and his com- 
peers, the boys of '76; of the heroes of 18 12 and 
of 1848; of the men in blue who fought under 
Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Thomas, and Farragut; 
of the men in gray who followed the lead of Johns- 
ton, Jackson, and Lee from 1861 to 1865; of the 
intrepid band that sailed with Dewey into Manila 
Bay, or of the small but heroic army of 1898 that 
fought at Las Guasimas, El Caney, and San Juan, 
and left the Stars and Stripes floating in triumph 
over the last stronghold of Spain in the New World. 

But above the grand heroic names immortalized 
by historian and poet shines, with an undimmed lus- 
ter all its own, the immortal name of Robert Ed- 
ward Lee. 

"Ah, Muse! You dare not claim 
A nobler man than he — 
Nor nobler man hath less of blame, 
Nor blameless man hath purer name, 
Nor purer name hath grander fame, 
Nor fame another Lee." 

The late Benjamin H. Hill, of Georgia, thus beau- 
tifully describes Lee's character: "He was a foe 
without hate; a friend without treachery; a soldier 



Richard P. Hobson 245 

without cruelty; a victor without oppression, and a 
victim without murmuring. He was a public officer 
without vices; a private citizen without wrong; a 
neighbor without reproach; a Christian without 
hypocrisy, and a man without guile. He was Caesar 
without his ambition; Frederick without his tyranny; 
Napoleon without his selfishness, and Washington 
without his reward. He was as obedient to au- 
thority as a servant, and royal in authority as a true 
king. He was gentle as a woman in life, and modest 
and pure as a virgin in thought; watchful as a Roman 
vestal in duty; submissive to law as Socrates, and 
grand in battle as Achilles !" 

And among the foremost holding these sentiments 
to-day are the brave soldiers against whom you were 
once arrayed in battle, and they, together with seventy 
million Americans, know that in future perils to our 
country you and your children will be foremost in 
the battle-line of duty, proud of the privilege of de- 
fending the glory, honor, and prestige of our coun- 
try, presenting under the folds of our national ensign 
an unbroken phalanx of united hearts — an impreg- 
nable bulwark of defense against any power that 
may arise against us. 



FOR A LARGER NAVY 

RICHARD P. HOBSON 

Congressman from Alabama 

[Extract from a speech delivered in the House of Rep- 
resentatives, April II, 1908, in favor of authorizing the 
construction of four new battleships.] 

Mr. Chairman, self-preservation is the first law 
of nature, whether it applies to a plant, to an animal, 
to a man, or a nation. Provision may be individual 



246 Oratory of the South 

or collective. Men in organized communities have 
provided collectively for self-defense. Collective 
provision is infinitely preferable to the individual pro- 
vision, not only because it is far more effective, but 
also because it relieves individuals from the more 
or less injurious task of going armed. Arbitration 
is infinitely preferable to armaments. But, Mr. 
Chairman, there must always be adequate provision 
for self-defense of one kind or the other. No form 
of life on this earth is left to the benevolence of other 
life for its preservation. It is wrong, it is flying 
in the face of the Almighty who created us to ask 
it to be otherwise. Therefore it simply remains, in 
providing for national defense, to determine whether 
adequate collective provision is attainable or whether, 
as a nation, we must depend upon our own national 
provision. 

My countrymen, do not let us be deceived. The 
question of self-preservation is too vital to be trifled 
with. Until long years after an international or- 
ganization is created we must still rely upon ourselves. 
Until arbitration has been extended to all questions 
and has proven itself effective we must look to our- 
selves for national self-preservation. Upon what in- 
strumentalities must we depend? Either armies or 
navies. Armies involve men in vast numbers, taking 
them from their work. Navies involve ships, leav- 
the men at work. Armies are in the midst of the 
people; navies are far away on the sea. Armies 
may tend to undermine the institutions of a country. 
No navy has ever usurped civil power or overturned 
a government since the world began. On the con- 
trary, navies have been the cradle of liberty, protect- 
ing the citizens of a country in their peaceful pursuits 
and relieving them from the pursuit of arms. 

For these reasons all nations of the earth have 
chosen naval power as far as conditions permitted. 



Richard P. Hobsori 24? 

Here in America the conditions for naval power are 
ideal. By controlling the waters that lead to our 
shores our nation could realize a perfect security and 
our citizens could continue in tranquillity to work out 
their glorious destiny. 

In provision for a navy, I submit that there should 
not only be adequate power to win the war, if it 
must come, but adequate power to prevent the war, 
if possible, and this means, my countrymen, that in 
the waters in question there should be a substantial 
margin of superiority. When navies seem to be 
about equal, the aggressive power believes in its own, 
and it will take occasion to put it to a test. 

The great European centers have been built in- 
land. America's great centers have been built on 
her waterways. On her Atlantic coast line alone 
there are 15,800,000 of American citizens living 
within gunshot of the water, with seventeen billions 
six hundred millions of property. On the Gulf there 
are 1,900,000 people and eight hundred millions of 
property. On the Great Lakes there are 7,000,000 
of people and seven billions two hundred millions of 
property. On the Mississippi River and its navi- 
gable tributaries there are eleven and a half millions 
of people and eight billions six hundred millions of 
property. We are the most exposed nation on 
earth — 36,000,000 of our people and thirty-seven 
billions of our property now lying within gunshot 
of the water, more citizens exposed than there are 
citizens exposed in all Europe combined, more prop- 
erty exposed than there is property in all the rest of 
the world combined. 

An expedition can leave Europe from any one of 
the great maritime powers with less than a hundred 
and fifty thousand men, and in three weeks that ex- 
pedition can capture Washington City, Baltimore, 
Philadelphia, and New York without any possibility 



24S Oratory of the South 

of substantial resistance. Furthermore, before we 
could assemble an army capable of expelling them 
from one city they could have done what they pleased 
with all that property and embark practically with- 
out loss. The expedition would destroy our ship- 
yards, our navy-yards, and arsenals, and leave us im- 
potent. We would have to start all over and build 
a new navy. How long would it take us? Perhaps 
ten years. And at how much cost? Untold billions. 
Then we would have to create a stupendous transport 
service and a great army, turning our citizens from 
their peaceful pursuits to the profession of arms. 
Then we would have to go across the ocean, where 
no base could be found and where a great army 
would resist any attempt to land. Without a ready 
army, without bases in Europe, without a merchant 
marine, the United States could be raided without a 
chance for retaliation. We would win in the end, 
but at what a cost! 

My countrymen, this should not be permitted to 
continue. As a simple matter of insurance, as a po- 
lice proposition, America must have a navy capable 
of controlling the ocean in the Atlantic against any 
nation of Europe. I am not talking war, I am talk- 
ing facts. We have 90,000,000 of people. I will 
take a second place to no man in appreciating their 
strength and their willingness, if necessary, to fight 
for liberty and for home and country, but the yellow 
man can fire as straight as the white man. The yel- 
low man can live on one-tenth of what the white man 
can. We have felt free from danger from invasion 
from Europe, although we are not free from raids. 
We may be free from invasion from Europe, but, 
my countrymen, we are not free from invasion from 
Asia. The location of our Pacific coast places it, 
with the open ocean toward Asia, in a dangerous 
condition, with Japan in alliance with a great mari- 



Richard P. Hobson 249 

time power of Europe that would keep the ocean 
open. The unlimited myriads of Asia could descend 
upon our shores. We are within reasonable dis- 
tance of the point where this nation may have to 
fight for its very existence. 

There are those who are afraid that if we have a 
great navy we will abuse the power. But I ask any 
gentleman here, would your constituents have this 
nation play the part of a bully, simply because we 
had a big navy? Of course not. It is not so abroad. 
Abroad a czar, an emperor, a monarch, or an am- 
bitious dynasty can have a nation's power turned to 
conquest and oppression. In America it would have 
to be the people, and they would not do it. In an- 
alyzing the power that there is in 90,000,000 of 
people, you know we have found out that they are 
the safest guardians of liberty. Do you not realize 
that those 90,000,000 of people, men who do not 
hate any other people in the world engaged in peace- 
ful pursuits, are the one repository in this world with 
which you can trust great power? 

I submit it to you, as long as nations have to have 
navies, then America, the peace nation, ought to have 
the biggest navy. You cannot escape this conclusion. 
But some say that this is the advocacy of force. It 
is nothing of the kind. I have lived in Europe, I 
have lived in Asia, I have seen enough of the reign 
of might and brute force around the world. The 
reign of might and brute force is the trouble with 
the suffering world. It is time some nation of peace 
and beneficence could have some influence in the great 
councils of the nations. This is the way in which 
is the shortest time to put an end to the reign of force 
in the world. Some say, "Oh, he is a young man who 
wants war; he has had a taste of war." Mr. Chair- 
man, it cured me, that taste did. I see men before 
me who in the great war would get up before break- 



250 Oratory of the South 

fast and do more fighting than was done in the Span- 
ish war altogether. You ask them if they do not 
believe me. I do not care how hot-blooded a man 
may be before he goes in. Let him go in and get a 
taste of war, and that will make of him a disciple of 
peace for the rest of his days. There has never been 
a greater slander on any men than to say that men of 
war want war. 

I have gone tirelessly about the land night and day, 
just pleading for peace because I see the war clouds 
are gathering — clouds that would bring not only war 
between nations of the white race, but a great war 
between the races of the world, and I see America 
upon the apex in mid-ocean, the friend of all nations, 
kin to the other nations, the one great nation without 
territorial ambition, standing for the rights of men 
and for those just policies between nations that make 
peace, enduring peace, possible. I see America 
placed here to send the black clouds of war back be- 
low the horizon. It is not a dream, not a vision. 
You and I can make it possible. Let us begin now 
by authorizing four battleships in this appropriation 
bill. 



THE NAVY IN PEACE AND WAR 

WINFIELD SCOTT SCHLEY 

Rear-Admiral in the United States Navy 

[Extract from a speech delivered at a dinner of the New 
England Society of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, December 
22, 1898.] 

The navy is that arm of the public defense the na- 
ture of whose duties is dual, in that they relate to 
both peace and war. In times of peace the Navy 
blazes the way across the trackless deep, maps out 



Winfield Scott Schley 251 

and marks the dangers which lie in the routes of 
commerce, in order that the peaceful argosies of trade 
may pursue safe routes to the distant markets of the 
world, there to exchange the varied commodities of 
commerce. It penetrates the jungle and the tangle 
of the inter-tropical regions. It stands ready to 
starve to death or to die from exposure. It pushes 
its way into the icy fastnesses of the north or of the 
south, in order that it may discover new channels of 
trade. It carries the influences of your power and 
the beneficent advantages of your civilization to the 
secluded and hermit empires of the Eastern world, 
and brings them in touch with our Western civiliza- 
tion and its love of law for the sake of the law rather 
than for fear of the law's punishments. It stands 
guard upon the outer frontiers of civilization, in pes- 
tilential climates, performing duties that are beyond 
the public observation, but yet which have their 
happy influence in maintaining the reputation and 
character of our country and extending the civilizing 
agency of its commerce. 

The bones of officers and men of the Navy lie in 
every country of the world, or along the highways 
of commerce; they mark the resting-places of mar- 
tyrs to a sense of duty that is stronger than any fear 
of death. The Navy works and strives and serves, 
without any misgivings and without any complaints, 
only that it may be considered the chief and best 
guardian of the interests of this people, of the pres- 
tige of this nation, and of the glory and renown of its 
flag. 

These are some of the duties of peace, which has 
its triumphs "no less renowned than war." But it is 
the martial side of the Navy that is the more at- 
tractive one to us. It is that side of its duty which 
presents to us its characters who have written their 
names and their fames in fire. No matter what may 



252 Oratory of the South 

be our ideas of civilization or how high our notions 
of peace, there is no one of us who has not felt his 
heart beat a little bit faster and his blood course a 
little bit more rapidly when reading of the daring 
and thrilling deeds of such men as John Paul Jones, 
or of Decatur, or of Stewart, or of Hull, or of 
Perry, or of MacDonald, or of Tatnall, or of In- 
gram, or of Cushing, or of Porter, or of Farragut. 

The war so happily ended has added new names 
to the galaxy of naval worthies. New stars are in 
the firmament. The men of our Navy have proven 
that they are able to defend their title to the spurs 
thev inherited. 



THE HERO OF SANTIAGO 

ISADOR RAYNER 

United States Senator from Maryland 

[The conclusion of his argument before the Schley Court 
of Inquiry, November 6, 1901.] 

Such a trial as this has never, to my knowledge, 
taken place in the history of the world. It seemed 
to my mind that this case had hardly opened with 
the testimony of Captain Higginson, before it com- 
menced to totter, and from day to day its visionary 
fabric has dissolved from view. When Captain 
Cook, their last witness, was put upon the stand, the 
entire structure collapsed, and now after the witnesses 
from our own ships and the gallant captain and crew 
of the Oregon and Admiral Schley have narrated 
their unvarnished tale, the whole tenement, with all 
of its compartments, from its foundation to its tur- 
ret, has disintegrated and lies like a mass of black- 
ened ruins. 

It has taken three years to reveal the truth. There 



Isador Rayner 253 

is not a single word that has fallen from the tongue 
of a single witness, friend or foe, that casts the 
shadow of a reflection upon the honored name of 
the hero of Santiago. He has never claimed the 
glory of that day. Let it be known he has never 
claimed the glory of that day. No word to this 
effect has ever gone forth from him to the American 
people. The valiant Cook, the heroic Clark, the la- 
mented Philip, the intrepid and undaunted Wain- 
wright, and all the other captains, and every man 
at every gun, and every soul on board of every ship 
are equal participants with Admiral Schley in the 
honor wrought upon that immortal day. We can- 
not strike his figure down standing upon the bridge 
of the Brooklyn. Says the Boatswain Hill, "Every 
head was bowed but his as the Spanish shot and 
shell fell thick and fast," and sent the life blood 
streaming from young Ellis, this gallant martyr for 
his country's cause. 

We cannot strike him down. "You may assas- 
sinate me, but you cannot intimidate me," said the 
Irish patriot Curran, as he turned upon his accusers 
and traducers. There he stands upon the bridge of 
the Brooklyn, his ship almost alone, receiving the 
entire fire of the Spanish foe, until the Oregon, as if 
upon the wings of lightning, sped into the thickness 
of this mortal carnage. "God bless the Oregon!" 
was the cheer that rang from deck to deck; and on 
they went, twin brothers in the chase, until the lee 
gun was fired from the Cristobal Colon and the des- 
potic colors of Spain were swept from the face of 
her ancient possessions. "Well done; congratulate 
you on the victory," was the streamer that was sent 
from the halyard of the Brooklyn, and from that 
day to this no man has ever heard from Admiral 
Schley the slightest whisper or intimation that he has 
usurped the glory of that imperishable hour. The 



254 Oratory of the South 

thunders of the Brooklyn, as she trembled on the 
waves, have been discordant music to the ears of 
envious foes, but they have pierced with a ringing 
melody the ears of his countrymen and struck a re- 
sponsive chord at the fireside of every American 
home. And what is more than all, which has been 
revealed in this case, as matchless as his courage, 
and as unsullied as his honor, is his beautiful charac- 
ter and the generous spirit that animates his soul and 
the forgiving heart that beats within his bosom. 

No; we cannot strike him down. Erect he stands 
as the MacGregor when his step was on his native 
heather and his eye was on the peak of Ben Lo- 
mond. His country does not want to strike him 
down nor cast a blur upon the pure escutcheon of his 
honored name. 

For three long years he has suffered, and now, 
thank God, he believes that the hour of his vindi- 
cation has come. With composure, with resignation, 
with supreme and unfaltering fortitude, he awaits the 
judgment of this illustrious tribunal; and if that de- 
liverance comes, he can from the high and exalted 
position that he occupies look down upon his tra- 
ducers and maligners, and with exultant pride ex- 
claim : "I care not for the venomous gossip of clubs 
and drawing-rooms and cliques and cabals, nor for 
the poisoned shafts of envy and of malice. I await, 
under the guidance of Divine Providence, the ver- 
dict of posterity." 

FOR A CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION 

DAVID A. DE ARMOND 

[Extract from a speech delivered in the House of Rep- 
resentatives, December II, 1906.] 

There has been a great deal of agitation in the 
country from time to time, and there is perhaps a 



David A. DeArmond 255 

good deal now, over the proposed amendment of 
the Constitution in a good many important particu- 
lars. With some of this agitation and some of these 
movements I am in sympathy ; with others I am not. 
A great many very good people, entitled to their 
views and entitled to a hearing upon them, are of 
the opinion that in a good many important particu- 
lars the Constitution ought to be amended. For in- 
stance, there are those who believe that it ought to 
be amended so as to provide for female suffrage. 
Others would have a marriage and divorce amend- 
ment. Some believe it should be amended with ref- 
erence to the liquor traffic, or by way of prohibition 
of the liquor traffic. Many believe there ought to 
be a constitutional provision for the election of 
United States Senators by direct vote of the people. 
There are those who are of the opinion that the Presi- 
dent and Vice-President should also be chosen by a 
direct vote. Some believe the Presidential term 
ought to be six years instead of four years, and that 
the President ought to be ineligible for reelection 
as his own successor. Some people, particularly in 
the latitude of Washington, believe it is vastly im- 
portant to have the Presidential term begin later in 
the season, so that inauguration day may fall at a 
time when the weather is more agreeable and fit for 
a pageant than it is likely to be about the fourth day 
of March. A great many people believe that Con- 
gress ought to be convened shortly after the election, 
instead of thirteen months after the members of the 
House of Representatives are chosen. There are 
some who believe that provision ought to be made 
in the Constitution whereby the Government, under 
suitable regulations of law, might insure the lives of 
citizens of this great Republic. I am one of those 
who entertain that opinion. Life insurance by the 
Government could be made both safe and profitable; 



256 Oratory of the South 

and what a boon to the people to get insurance at 
what it is worth ! There are people who believe that 
by an amendment to the Constitution greater power, 
better defined power, power that may be more easily 
exercised and more effectively employed, might be 
supplied for dealing with great trusts and other 
mighty corporate agencies of the land. 

I need not take the time to enumerating the va- 
rious matters concerning which amendments have 
been and are persistently urged and earnestly desired. 
I mention some of them merely as preliminary to the 
consideration of whether or not it might be advisable 
for the people of this country, by action of their va- 
rious State legislatures, to call upon Congress to 
make provision for a constitutional convention, in 
which all the plans and schemes of amendment 
might be presented. Such a convention surely would 
be composed, in part at least, of the ablest men in 
the land. It would be a very great body of Ameri- 
can statesmen and citizens. I believe the very fact 
of the assembling of such a convention — I believe, 
indeed, the preliminary discussions leading up to it or 
designed to bring it about — would be productive of 
much good in legislation in Congress and in the sev- 
eral State legislatures. 

Now, I am not one of those who believe that the 
old Constitution is worn out, or that the ingenuity 
and statesmanship and patriotism of to-day would 
be likely to supply something which in its funda- 
mental principles would be any improvement upon, 
or even as good as, that old instrument; but I am 
one of those who do believe that a constitution made 
more than a hundred years ago, when conditions 
were vastly different, when corporations were in their 
infancy, when our population was sparse, when 
wealth was not concentrated, when great agencies in 
government were not employed as they are employed 



David A. DeArmond 257 

now, before the day of the telegraph and telephone 
and the many triumphs of electricity, before many of 
the mighty inventions of to-day and yesterday were 
dreamed of; that a constitution made then may lack 
something now. I believe the makers did not em- 
body in that instrument of matchless worth, our Con- 
stitution, all that might be or is now sufficient or 
desirable for present needs or to equip the people 
to meet the rapidly growing needs of the future of 
a great country. I believe a convention of American 
citizens, assembled for the purpose of considering 
various propositions to amend that Constitution, 
would be likely to submit some wholesome and timely 
amendments, perhaps a good many, but some, at 
least, which would meet the approval of the American 
people; and, by their sovereign will, be made part 
of the Constitution. 

But, as to the main proposition. Here we have a 
Constitution, one of the greatest and best ever brought 
into being by human brains; we have a Constitu- 
tion framed in the infancy of the Republic, framed 
in the primitive days, before the great railroad had 
an existence, before great electric motors and tele- 
graph and telephone were known; before the 
modern agencies called "trusts" had a being or were 
dreamed of; before the appearance of the million- 
aire as a common every-day citizen; before the near 
approach of the billionaire; before the aggregation 
of hundreds and thousands of millions of dollars 
under single control; and it seems to me that in our 
progress, in the history of our nation and of the 
world, we certainly have reached a time when it 
might be wise to assemble a convention to consider 
whether or not amendments could with profit be 
proposed to the great conservator of our liberties; 
and if they should be proposed, for the people de- 
liberately, after their own manner, in their own 

17 



258 Oratory of the South 

fashion, to consider whether or not the Constitution 
should be amended. 



THE NEGRO PROBLEM 

EATON J. BOWERS 

Congressman from Mississippi 

[Extract from a speech delivered in the House of Repre- 
sentatives, April 8, 1904.] 

Let me say to the gentleman from Massachusetts 
that it is evident that we have at least two theories 
as to how the negro should be dealt with. One may- 
be termed his idea of the development by higher 
education, social equality, and the like, while the 
other may be dominated the Southern idea of abso- 
lute segregation of the two races, the fitting the negro 
only for that sphere and station which, based upon 
an experience born of more than a century's know- 
ledge of him as a slave and nearly forty years' ex- 
perience with him as a freedman, we believe he can 
acceptably and worthily fill, with absolute denial of 
social intercourse and with every restriction on his 
participation in political affairs or government that is 
permissible under the Federal Constitution. 

Let us see, in the light of statistics, which idea has 
borne the best results. In Massachusetts the ratio of 
criminals among the negroes in 1890 was 7.271 per 
thousand; in Mississippi, 1.425 per thousand. In 
other words, the negro in Mississippi is six times bet- 
ter than the negro in Massachusetts, notwithstanding 
the Massachusetts negro is vastly superior in edu- 
cation to his more moral and prosperous brother in 
( Mississippi The Massachusetts negro, under his 
theory, is six times as criminal as his brother in Mis- 
sissippi, who is the product of ours. 



Eaton J. Bowers 259 

In New York the negro criminals are 10 per thou- 
sand. In Alabama they are 3.089 per thousand. 
In Pennsylvania the ratio is 6.859 P er thousand. 
In Louisiana it is 2.214 per thousand. In Con- 
necticut it is 5.446 per thousand, while in South 
Carolina it is 1.54 per thousand. In Illinois it is 
7.926 per thousand, while in North Carolina it is 
2.893 P er thousand. In Kansas it is 6.1 15 per thou- 
sand, while in Virginia it is 2.546 per thousand; and 
before I leave this subject I desire to call attention to 
the fact that the figures which I have cited show 
that the percentage of white as well as black 
criminals is less in the South than in the North, and 
that in Mississippi it is lower than in any other State 
given. 

The six Southern States selected have been chosen 
because of the fact that their recent constitutions 
have limited the right of suffrage. The Northern 
States are those that possess any considerable negro 
population. 

Now, from all these facts the deduction which 
comes to my mind conclusively and irresistibly is that, 
while you feed the negro upon the abstraction of 
equal social and political rights, you deny him the 
substantial right to earn his bread in the station and 
in the avocations for which he is by nature and 
training fitted. 

You deny him the bread of existence and tender 
him the stone of participation in political affairs. 
He asks for fish in the shape of the right to labor 
and pursue happiness, you give him instead the ser- 
pent of racial equality and intercourse. On the other 
hand, we deny him that intercourse with the white 
race which can have but one result — viz., an irre- 
conciliable and never-ending conflict between the 
races — but we open to him, freely and without re- 
striction, every avenue of labor and every oppor- 



260 Oratory of the South 

tunity to improve his condition by honest and legiti- 
mate toil. 

If the past is any indication of the future, then so 
surely as the night follows the day our theory is 
right and yours wrong. More than a decade of 
negro denomination and misrule has taught us in 
that severest but most valuable of schools — expe- 
rience — that he is not fitted for government, and 
should therefore, so far as possible within the con- 
stitutional limits, be eliminated as a political factor, 
and, speaking for myself, I thank God that the con- 
stitutional convention of Mississippi "swept the 
circle of expedients, within the field of permissible 
action under the limitations of the Federal Consti- 
tution, to obstruct the exercise of the franchise by 
the negro race." 

That we have not exceeded the limits of "per- 
missible action within the Constitution" the highest 
tribunal in this land has declared, and the peace and 
prosperity that we have enjoyed since the adoption 
of that constitution, the increased tranquillity and 
contentment abiding with both races, the influx of 
capital, and the rapid development which follows 
the settlement of any vexed question which threatens 
to disturb the peace and internal quietude of a State, 
have all been ours. 

The restriction of suffrage in Mississippi was the 
wisest statesmanship ever exhibited in that proud 
Commonwealth, and its results have been more benefi- 
cent and far-reaching than even that great states- 
man, Senator George, to whom more than to any 
other one man is due this great reform, with his far- 
seeing eye predicted. We have disfranchised not 
only the ignorant and vicious black, but the ignorant 
and vicious white as well, and the electorate in Mis- 
sissippi is now confined to those, and to those alone, 
who are qualified by intelligence and character for 



Eaton J. Bowers 261 

the proper and patriotic exercise of this great fran- 
chise. 

I cannot believe, Mr. Chairman, that the mass of 
the people in the North look at this matter as the 
gentlemen from Massachusetts and Kansas do. I 
believe that there has been for a long time a great 
and growing sentiment — a sentiment gaining daily in 
volume and force — that the South is grappling with 
this question in an intelligent and patriotic way; 
that by reason of our intimate knowledge of the 
negro race and its characteristics we are better quali- 
fied to solve it than our brethren of the North; and 
I furthermore believe that the overwhelming dis- 
position of the North now is to let the South solve 
this question alone, without any interference from 
those who are less familiar with the conditions and 
embarrassments than we are. I would not for the 
world do anything which would retard or in the 
least disturb this wholesome sentiment. 

I have entered into this discussion with some reluc- 
tance, but without fear. I have been reluctant not 
because of any want of confidence in my position, but 
because of an indefinable dread that by some impru- 
dent word I might retard the growth of the senti- 
ment and the idea to which I have just alluded, and 
which I believe to be absolutely indispensable to the 
correct and proper solution of the question. I have 
attempted to speak with temperance and prudence. 
Following the example of the gentleman from Mas- 
sachusetts, I have repressed much that I feel. I 
know that I have spoken the truth. 



262 Oratory of the South 

AGAINST THE ENLISTMENT OF NEGRO 
SOLDIERS 

JAMES L. SLAYDEN 

Congressman from Texas 

[Extract from a speech delivered in the House of Rep- 
resentatives, January 8, 1907.] 

Mr. Chairman, at the beginning of the present 
session I submitted a bill to amend the military laws 
so that after July 1, 1907, there would be no 
negro regiments in the Army of the United States. 

For a long time I have looked upon it as a desirable 
military reform. Recent events of a startling and 
deplorable nature have convinced me that it is urgent. 
It cannot be delayed, I apprehend, without risking 
a collision between white citizens and negro troops. 
There is reason to fear that occasional assassina- 
tion and riot may be succeeded by disasters that will 
measure up to the standard of battle. Firmly believ- 
ing that, as I did, I regarded it as a duty to try to 
prevent such a condition by amending the law. A 
series of violent outbreaks on the part of negro sol- 
diers, culminating in a murderous assault on the un- 
offending citizens of Brownsville, decided me to offer 
the bill without further delay. The bill was not 
offered for buncombe. I proposed it because I am 
absolutely convinced that it is a measure of reform 
which must ultimately commend itself to the judg- 
ment of the American Congress. I very much regret 
to say, however, that there does not appear to be any 
immediate prospect of success. Like many good leg- 
islative suggestions, it will probably have to die the 
death many times before the mind and conscience of 
a majority can be awakened. The lack of active 
sympathy for my measure among such of my Re- 
publican colleagues as I have spoken to about it 



James L. Slayden 263 

makes me realize that I am not apt to have an oppor- 
tunity to discuss the bill as pending before the House, 
and so, Mr. Chairman, I shall avail myself of this 
occasion to speak of it. 

In the history of the negro troops of the United 
States one finds many chapters that tell of violent 
breaches of discipline, of riotous and mutinous con- 
duct, of murder and race hostility. All these are 
to be found in the cold, formal, official reports filed 
in the Department of War. These reports are not 
written with any consideration of the great politico- 
social question on which they have an important bear- 
ing, but it takes no very alert student to find the race 
question running all through them. As a rule, offi- 
cial reports are lacking in vitality, but these, when 
they touch even remotely the great hopeless and in- 
soluble question — and if any question about the 
affairs of men is hopeless and insoluble this is — that 
confronts a large section of the country, throb and 
vibrate with human interest. 

In declaring their unfitness to be American soldiers 
I have in view only the circumstances of their ser- 
vice. I do not impeach their physical courage. 
That is a virtue that belongs to nearly all men, and 
if there is any difference between savage and civil- 
ized man in this respect, it possibly lies with the 
savage, who is undeterred from rash ventures by 
thought of the consequences. 

But courage is only one of the qualities required in 
a good soldier. There should be between him and the 
people whose uniform he wears perfect sympathy 
and a common aspiration. This sympathy, this as- 
piration, does not exist between the blacks and whites, 
and in the very nature of things can never exist. It 
is prevented by basic and unalterable differences. 

It is not my duty, nor is this the time or place, 
to explain, justify, or condemn the feeling. I 



264 Oratory of the South 

merely assert as a fact that mutual race antipathy 
does exist, that its existence has been recognized by 
students of the question who have considered it on a 
plane far above partisan politics, and that it 
is folly to ignore it in our legislation. If we persist 
in the folly, we will surely end in disaster. 

This deep-seated and ineradicable race hostility, 
which grows daily more acute, is not peculiar to the 
United States. Although dormant when apart, it is 
unfailingly developed everywhere by contact and 
competition. It has written tragic chapters into the 
history of Asia, Africa, and Europe. The Moors 
were as unwelcome to the people of the Spanish 
Peninsula as the Chinese and Japanese are to our 
fellow-citizens on the Pacific coast, and it will not 
do to dismiss the Pacific coast race question by say- 
ing that the objection to Asiatic immigration in Cali- 
fornia is only from the hoodlum element. It runs 
through all classes of society. 

A few days ago I read in the Washington Herald 
a statement made by a retired officer of the British 
army who, although he spoke guardedly, as becomes 
a visitor to the country, did not conceal his surprise 
at the fact that black soldiers are kept in our Army 
for service in times of peace. He said that Great 
Britain, even under the stress of war and in the face 
of repeated disasters, did not employ them against 
the Boers in South Africa. He assigned as a reason 
for the British policy the admitted prejudice, mutu- 
ally entertained, of the races. I mention this, Mr. 
Chairman, to show that the people of the United 
States are not peculiar in this respect. I say the 
people of the United States, instead of the people of 
the South, because of comparatively recent events 
which show that this prejudice does not stop at 
Mason and Dixon's line. Lynchings are a disgrace, 
I admit, and they should be made impossible by the 



James L. Slayden 265 

enactment of such intelligent laws and by such 
prompt and rigid enforcement of them that no man's 
thoughts would ever turn in that direction for the 
punishment of crime. But they are not peculiar to 
the South. They are only more frequent there be- 
cause of multiplied instances of crime of a frightful 
sort. Even Springfield, Ohio, if the press and that 
entertaining essayist, Ray Stannard Baker, tell the 
truth, has on occasions resorted to lynching. And 
strangely enough the mob spirit was largely directed 
by race prejudice. The lynching of a negro criminal 
at Springfield in March, 1904, was followed by a 
very carnival of crime directed at the black inhabi- 
tants of that city. Not only was there evidence of 
prejudice against the particular criminals, but it 
seemed to have been directed against the whole negro 
race. They were hunted out of their homes and 
their property destroyed by fire. Danville, Illinois, 
was also the scene of a manifestation of race preju- 
dice, which the writer says is growing with the growth 
of the negro population. It would not be difficult 
to multiply these illustrations of the fact that the 
race prejudice which exists in the South, and which 
we admit, is also to be found in the North, but 
usually denied. The newspapers give us over- 
whelming evidence of it every day. 

As I have already said, I fear that we have not 
yet reached the stage where we will legislate on this 
matter intelligently and for conditions as we find 
them. But we will reach it by and by. 

After a few incidents like those at Fort Meade, 
San Carlos, El Paso, and Brownsville, Congress will 
be really aroused to a discharge of its duty in this 
matter. Repeat the Brownsville affair with a change 
of locus — let it occur in Michigan, New York, or 
Illinois — and a new light will be seen. Until then 
we will be as patient as possible, having faith that 



266 Oratory of the South 

finally the sympathy of the whole country will be 
given to that section which has been so tried in the 
school of disaster, a section which stands face to face 
with the perplexities and dangers of the most diffi- 
cult question any people on earth were ever called 
on to meet and solve. When all the States com- 
prehended this question, which now they barely ap- 
prehend, they will help us of the South to make it 
certain that the homes of white men in a white man's 
country will be protected by white men only. 



THE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT 

ALLEN CAPERTON BRAXTON 

Of the Richmond (Va.) Bar 

[Extract from a speech in response to the toast, "George 
Washington," delivered at a banquet of the New York 
Southern Society, February 21, 1903.] 

After grim-visaged war had closed his crimson 
testament, but not yet smoothed his wrinkled front, 
while the tempestuous waves of public passion were 
still tossing the ship of state about, in a moment of 
infatuation and thoughtless folly, in an evil hour, by 
the combined agencies of fraud and force, the Fif- 
teenth Amendment was added to our Federal Con- 
stitution, thus carrying us as far beyond right and 
reason, in one direction, as slavery had taken us in the 
other. 

No white man believes in the Fifteenth Amend- 
ment, save as a theory to be applied to some other 
man's case. The loudest advocates of its applica- 
tion to the South stood aghast when they met it face 
to face in the City of Washington, in the State of 
California, and in our new insular possessions. It 
is wrong in principle, it is impossible of enforcement 



Allen Caperton Braxton 267 

where the inferior race is numerous, it is demoral- 
izing to the negro, it is corrupting to the white man ; 
to abandon that ignorant and helpless race to their 
own devices and control would be the greatest 
cruelty; to set them up as rulers over the race that 
produced Washington and Lee would be a crime 
against nature and a sin against God! 

It is said that "unsettled questions have no pity 
for the repose of mankind," and, as surely as the 
eternal principles of right and reason are destined 
ultimately to prevail, just so sure am I that the stu- 
pendous folly of the Fifteenth Amendment, long 
since condemned by Abraham Lincoln himself, will 
yet be rectified by the great voice of the American 
people ! 

No sooner had the Fifteenth Amendment been 
proclaimed than the negroes banded themselves to- 
gether in a solid impenetrable mass; and, true to 
the instincts of their race, voluntarily submitted 
themselves to a political bondage as complete as that 
from which, without any effort of their own, they 
had recently been liberated. This black phalanx, 
officered by the worst elements in the community and 
manned by their blind, unreasoning and thought- 
less followers, whom they herded to and from the 
polls "like dumb, driven cattle," soon became a 
menace to the very civilization of the country. The 
necessary and inevitable consequence of this hope- 
less consolidation of the negro vote was the creation, 
in the South, of a white man's party and a black 
man's party, which single issue, of white or black 
rule, was so immediate, so absolutely vital, so utterly 
overwhelming in its consequences, that it simply 
obliterated all others. 

Thus it was that the persistent refusal of the 
negroes to accept political freedom forced the whites 
to abandon it and to blindly follow the white man's 



268 Oratory of the South 

party regardless of any and all political heresies by 
which, for the time, it might be dominated. 

In obtaining recruits among Southern white men, 
what inducement could any political party offer that 
was comparable to sympathy and support in their 
struggle against the black peril at their doors ! It 
was as if a man facing in deadly encounter some 
terrible and ferocious animal, should be offered by 
one friend a tip on the stock market and by another 
a weapon with which to defend himself. Could he 
hesitate which offer to accept? Would he insist that 
the man offering him the gun should first satisfy him 
that his views on finance were sound? Such was the 
condition of the Southern people, and such was the 
reason why the "Solid South" was solid. 

When God in his wrath saw fit to banish us into 
the wilderness with the Fifteenth Amendment, he 
still in his mercy left a difficult, narrow but safe 
path by which we might, after much striving and 
tribulation, even yet achieve salvation and regain 
the Promised Land. Mr. Chairman, the Southern 
people have struck that trail! They have reached 
Mount Pisgah, and are now with rejoicing and grati- 
tude to God gazing once more into the happy land 
of Canaan! 

One by one the Southern States, compelled at last 
to relinquish the principle of free manhood suffrage 
so dear to them (but which they, like the citizens 
of Washington, gladly exchange for immunity from 
negro domination), have availed themselves of the 
expedients which have been found and authoritatively 
declared to be permissible under the Fifteenth 
Amendment, and placed such restrictions upon suf- 
frage, irrespective of race or color, that the vast sea 
of ignorant, venal, and vicious negroes is now safely 
and perpetually shut out. 

We have legislated as far as we could against the 



William H. Fleming 269 

negro's defects and bad qualities rather than against 
his color or his race. The details of the methods 
adopted vary with the several States; but in sub- 
stance the remedy is everywhere the same, and con- 
sists in requiring something more of a voter than 
merely twenty-one years of innocuous existence. 

The negro vote has not been entirely eliminated 
in the South, but, by permitting only those to vote 
who can be entrusted with the ballot without too 
great peril to the State, that vote has been reduced 
far below the danger point; and thus one-third of 
the fairest and richest domain of this great nation 
has been saved from the threatened possibility of 
becoming, like another Hayti, the permanent home 
of anarchy and barbarism. 

The present condition having been brought about 
by our new suffrage laws, peace and good-will 
between the races are rapidly increasing, and the 
white men of the South may now divide, and are 
dividing, upon the live economic issues of the day. 
The great body of the hitherto deluded and much 
exploited negroes are now beginning to see who are 
their real friends; they are realizing that the in- 
terests of their white neighbors and their own are 
identical, and that, after all, the white man's gov- 
ernment is far best for both races. 



THE SOLUTION OF THE RACE PROBLEM 

WILLIAM H. FLEMING 

Of the Augusta (Ga.) Bar 

[Extract from an address delivered before the Alumni 
Society of the State University of Georgia, Athens, June 19, 
1906.] 

In seeking a solution of any difficult problem the 
first step should be to eliminate the impossible 



270 Oratory of the South 

schemes proposed, and then concentrate on some line 
of operation that is at least possible. We often hear 
the epigrammatic dictum that there are but three pos- 
sible solutions of our race problem : deportation, 
assimilation, or annihilation. When we bring our 
sober senses to bear, all three of these so-called pos- 
sibilities appear to be practical impossibilities. Not 
one of the three presents a working hypothesis. 
Physical facts alone prevent deportation. Physical 
facts, stressed by an ineradicable race pride, bar the 
way against assimilation. Physical facts backed by 
our religion, our civilization, our very selves, forbid 
annihilation. We cannot imitate Herod. 

This much seems clear beyond doubt, that the 
whites are going to stay in this Southland for all 
time, and so are the negroes going to stay here, in 
greater or less proportions, for generations to come. 
If, then, both races are to remain together, the 
plainly sensible thing for statesmen of this day to 
do is to devise the best modus vivendi or working 
plan by which the greatest good can be accomplished 
for ourselves and our posterity. We of this day 
are not expected to overload ourselves with the 
burden of settling all the problems of all future ages. 
If we take good care of the next few centuries, we 
may well be content to leave some matters to be at- 
tended to by our remote posterity — aided, of course, 
by Providence. 

Over against that trinity of impossibilities — de- 
portation, assimilation, or annihilation — let us offer 
the simple plan of justice. 

The first and absolutely essential factor in any 
working hypothesis at the South so far as human 
ken can now foresee, is white supremacy — supremacy 
arising from present natural superiority, but based 
always on justice to the negro. 

Those whose stock in trade is "hating the nigger" 



William H. Fleming 271 

may easily gain some temporary advantage for them- 
selves in our white primaries, where it requires no 
courage either physical or moral to strike those who 
have no power to strike back — not even with a paper 
ballot. But these men will achieve nothing per- 
manent for the good of the State or of the nation by 
stirring up race passion and prejudice. Injustice 
and persecution will not solve any of the problems of 
the ages. God did not so ordain His universe. 

Justly proud of our race, we refuse to amalgamate 
with the negro. Nevertheless, the negro is a human 
being, under the Fatherhood of God, and conse- 
quently within the Brotherhood of Man — for those 
two relations are inseparably joined together. All 
soul-possessing creatures must be sons of God and 
joint heirs of immortality. 

Moreover, the negro is an American citizen, and 
is protected as such by guarantees of the Constitu- 
tion that are as irrepealable almost as the Bill of 
Rights itself. Nor if such a thing as repealing these 
guarantees were possible, would it be wise for the 
South. Suppose we admit the oft reiterated proposi- 
tion that no two races so distinct as the Caucasian 
and the negro can live together on terms of perfect 
equality; yet it is equally true that without some 
access to the ballot, present or prospective, some par- 
ticipation in the government, no inferior race in an 
elective republic could long protect itself against 
reduction to slavery in many of its substantial forms 
— and God knows the South wants no more of that 
curse. 

We have long passed the crisis of the disease 
brought on by the existence of slavery in the blood 
of the republic. Let us now build up the body 
politic in health and strength, and guard it against 
ever again being inoculated with a poison even re- 
motely resembling that deadly virus. Sporadic cases 



272 Oratory of the South 

of peonage have already developed in several States 
and have been suppressed. Let us provide against 
every appearance of contagion. 

One of the most serious difficulties about the solu- 
tion of our problem is to be found in getting the 
dominant whites of the South to draw a proper dis- 
crimination between a laudable pride in our race and 
an unworthy prejudice against the negro race. 
Prejudice of any sort is hostile to that sound judgment 
which the Creator gave us for our guide. Race preju- 
dice presents this disturbing element in one of its most 
unreasoning forms. In violence it ranks next to re- 
ligious fanaticism. The one is based on a supposed 
duty to God; the other on a supposed duty to one's 
race-blood. The deeper this sense of duty, the more 
hardened the mind against every appeal to reason. 
In persecuting the early Christians, Paul thought he 
was doing his duty to God. The men who hanged 
the witches in New England thought they were doing 
their duty. 

In calmly considering now the situation that con- 
fronted our statesmen of the ante-bellum period, that 
which most astounds us is their apparent failure to 
foresee what would have been the inevitable conse- 
quence of an indefinite continuance of slavery in its 
effect on race purity and on relative race numbers. 
The ratio of increase of the negroes was far in excess 
of the whites. The great laboring middle class, 
which forms the backbone of every nation's pluck 
and power, was fast migrating westward, and the 
remaining population was rapidly crystallizing into 
an upper class of white slave holders and a lower 
class of negro slaves — the latter outmultiplying their 
masters in numbers. Another one hundred years of 
slavery would in all probability have doomed the 
South to absolute negro domination by mere weight 
of numbers whenever emancipation should come — 



William H. Fleming 273 

and come it was sure to do at some time in the evolu- 
tion of the elemental forces that were at work. 

When a subject people in the hard school of ex- 
perience gradually assert themselves and evolve from 
within the physical, mental, and spiritual forces that 
achieve their freedom, as did the Anglo-Saxons from 
under the yoke of their Norman conquerors, they 
come forth by natural growth prepared for the duties 
and responsibilities of self-government. But the 
negro as a race had undergone no such process of evo- 
lution. His transportation from Africa to America 
and his transition from slavery to freedom were both 
the result of external impositions and not of internal 
development. The power came from without, not 
from within. He did not win his freedom. It was 
bestowed upon him. Granting that he is only a back- 
ward member of the great human family, which, as 
most evolutionists and Christians believe, is moving 
steadily on toward the distant goal of millennial per- 
fection, yet we cannot fail to see that the negro race 
was suddenly projected forward into a stage of civili- 
zation many generations in advance of its own natural 
development. 

It it any wonder, then, that the negro as a race 
should not be altogether fitted to the laws and cus- 
toms and political institutions of those among whom 
his lot was cast? 

We do not know what shifting phases this vexing 
race problem may assume, but we may rest in the con- 
viction that its ultimate solution must be reached by 
proceeding along the lines of honesty and justice. 
Let us not in cowardice or in want of faith needlessly 
sacrifice our higher ideals of private and public life. 
Race differences may necessitate social distinctions. 
But race differences cannot repeal the moral law. 
The foundation of the moral law is justice. Let 
us solve the negro problem by giving the negro 

18 



274 Oratory of the South 

justice and applying to him the recognized principles 
of the moral law. 

This does not require social equality. It does 
not require that we should surrender into his inex- 
perienced and incompetent hands the reins of poli- 
tical government. But it does require that we 
recognize his fundamental rights as a man, and that 
we judge each individual according to his own quali- 
fications and not according to the lower average 
characteristics of his race. Political rights cannot 
justly be withheld from those American citizens of 
an inferior or backward race who raise themselves 
up to the standard of citizenship which the superior 
race applies to its own members. 

It is true that the right of suffrage is not one of 
those inalienable rights of man, like life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of happiness, as enumerated in the Dec- 
laration of Independence; but the right of exemp- 
tion from discrimination in the exercise of suffrage 
on account of race is one of the guaranteed constitu- 
tional rights of all American citizens. 

We of the South are an integral part of this great 
country. We should stand ready to make every 
sacrifice demanded by honor and permitted by wis- 
dom to remove the last vestige of an excuse for the 
perpetuation of that spirit of sectionalism which ex- 
cludes us from the full participation in governmental 
honors to which our brain and character entitle us. 

We cannot afford to sacrifice our ideals of justice, 
of law, and of religion for the purpose of preventing 
the negro from elevating himself. If we wish to 
preserve the wide gap between our race and his in 
the onward progress of civilization, let us do it by 
lifting ourselves up, not by holding him down. If, 
as some predict, the negro in the distant future 
must fail and fall by the wayside in the strenuous 
march of the nations, let him fall by his own in- 



William H. Fleming 275 

feriority, and not by our tyranny. Give him a fair 
chance to work out what is in him. 

If the negroes as a race are to be disfranchised 
regardless of the personal qualifications of merito- 
rious individual members of that race, consider for a 
moment some of the changes we must make in many 
of the fundamental doctrines lying at the base of 
our government. The revised version of our politi- 
cal Bible would have to read something like this: 
"No taxation without representation — except as to 
negroes;" "equal rights to all — except as to ne- 
groes;" "all men are created equal — except as to 
negroes." 

Some modern critics seriously suggest that we 
should amend that paragraph of the Declaration of 
Independence which asserts the equal rights of men, 
so as to adjust it more accurately to historical and 
scientific facts. But that epoch-making document 
needs no alteration upon the subject of human rights 
when interpreted as it was intended to be interpreted 
by the man who drafted it. Mark you, Mr. Jef- 
ferson did not write: "All men are born free," as 
the quotation is sometimes given. That looser lan- 
guage is found in the constitution of Massachusetts, 
not in the Declaration of Independence. Such an 
assertion would have been disproved by the historical 
fact of slavery then existing. What Mr. Jefferson 
wrote was, "All men are created equal." That is 
to say, not equal in exterior circumstances, nor in 
physical or mental attributes, but equal in the sight 
of God and just human law, m their inalienable 
rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 
Americans want no recantation of that declaration. 
It is the political corollary of the Christian doctrine 
of the justice and the Fatherhood of God. Let it 
stand as it was penned by Jefferson, an ennobling, 
even though unattainable, ideal demanded by the 



276 Oratory of the South 

spiritual nature of man — one of those ideals that 
have done more to lift up humanity and to build up 
civilization than all the gold from all the mines of 
all the world. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOUTH 

EZEKIEL S. CANDLER 

Congressman from Mississippi 

[Extract from a speech delivered in the House of Rep- 
resentatives, January 25, 1907.] 

It is a source of gratification and pleasure to us 
in the South that the agriculturist is coming to his 
own once more. I am glad to see him taking an 
interest in his own affairs and fixing, to a certain 
extent at least, the price of the product that he toils 
to produce, and not leaving it to Wall Street or to 
the stock gamblers, the cotton gamblers, the wheat 
gamblers, and to the gamblers in "futures" to fix the 
price of his product and say he shall take that, with- 
out any regard to its actual and intrinsic value. 

It is a source of gratification that they are standing 
together, saying to the people of this country and 
saying to the people of foreign countries that we 
purpose to fix the price of our products, and if you 
want them at that price you can buy them if you 
have the money, and if you do not want them we 
are able to take care of them and able to keep them ; 
we will build warehouses in which to protect our 
products from the storms and weather and preserve 
them for future sale. I hope they will continue to 
stand shoulder to shoulder, man to man, for their 
own protection and their own welfare. Before they 
took this position we sold the cotton crop of 1900 
for $387,000,000. Now, with the farmers stand- 
ing together, we sold it last year for $667,000,000. 



Ezekiel S. Candler 277 

By reason of this action on their part, fixing tne price 
of their own product and not leaving it to the grain 
gamblers and the cotton gamblers and gamblers in 
futures to say what it shall be, they raised the price 
of that product nearly $300,000,000 and brought 
prosperity to that section of the country, and in that 
way brought prosperity to every section of the coun- 
try, because the prosperity of one section is the pros- 
perity of them all. 

What has done more to sustain the gold standard 
than any other one thing is the cotton crop, which 
is exported to foreigners and brings gold to our coun- 
try. Last year more than a million dollars of cotton 
each day, Sundays and holidays included, was ex- 
ported to foreign countries and sold for gold. To 
be entirely accurate, last year $401,000,000 worth 
of cotton was exported and sold and brought that 
amount of gold to the United States in exchange 
for that product, which was produced in the South- 
land. 

Cotton is the great leveler in commercial and in- 
ternational exchange; and when I say that I speak 
advisedly, because that which can control the markets 
of the world as to money must, to a certain extent, 
control the destinies of the country and become a 
great leveler in the transactions between those coun- 
tries. 

I want to tell you that it is a fact that the cotton 
production in the last five years has amounted to 
more in dollars and cents than the total world's 
production of gold and silver both combined. 
Listen ! In the last five years the total value of the 
world's gold and silver production was $2,578,852,- 
000. The total value of our cotton crop in the last 
five years was $2,974,000,000. Therefore, the total 
production of cotton in five years has amounted to 
more than the total value of the world's production 



278 Oratory of the South 

of both gold and silver combined. That being true, 
then cotton is the great leveler in international trade. 
We say that cotton is king. Some people say, "No; 
iron is king." It is said that Mr. Carnegie made 
the remark that iron is king, and Mrs. Carnegie 
promptly replied, "If iron is king, then coal is 
queen." We say that the cotton crop is the king 
of the commerce of the world, and we do not admit 
anything to the contrary; but admitting for the sake 
of argument that iron is king, we stand in just as 
advantageous a position in reference to that great 
product as we do in reference to the cotton. 

We find by investigation that there are in the 
Southland to-day 62,500 square miles of coal, while 
in England and Germany combined there are only 
12,000 square miles and a little over. So within the 
borders of the Southland we have not only more coal 
land than both Germany and England combined, but 
more than all Europe put together. So, if iron is 
king and coal is queen, how does the country stand 
that possesses unquestionably that which is king, 
namely, King Cotton, and then possesses a majority 
of the iron lands of this country and a majority of 
the coal lands of this country? Having the two 
kings and the queen in the Southland, we ask nothing 
of anybody else. 

One other thing, and then I shall be done. The 
one other great product in this country is timber. 
And do you know that to-day more than half of the 
standing timber in the United States is south of 
Mason and Dixon's line? So when we have the 
cotton, when we have the iron, when we have the 
coal, and when we have the timber, all within that 
section of the country, no wonder that prosperity has 
perched upon our banners; no wonder that we are 
happy and rejoicing. 

Forty-five years ago those of the South who were 



Ezekiel S. Candler 279 

old enough to be away from home were engaged in 
the conflict that was then in progress. When those 
men returned to their homes they found devastation 
and destruction on every hand; but standing brave, 
courageous, and noble as they were, asking no favors 
and no concessions, the only thing that they ever have 
asked and the only thing that we ask now is that we 
shall be permitted to work out our own salvation 
under the shining canopy of God Almighty's heaven, 
trusting to Him for guidance, protection, support, 
and comfort; looking to Him for the sunshine and 
the showers, for those things that will bring from 
the earth the production which will yield happiness, 
peace, and joy to our people. To-day we are coming 
back to our own. We are reaching the point where 
we can take care of our own affairs without asking 
anything from anybody anywhere. Only a few 
years ago we had to go to Wall Street or to some 
commercial center, to some great banking institution, 
to obtain the money with which to transact our busi- 
ness ; but last year the people of the South were able 
to market their own cotton without asking favor from 
any source, without asking a loan from anywhere; 
and this prosperity that has come over the South- 
land has permeated all this country of ours. 

William D. Kelley said years ago that the pros- 
perity of the South was the prosperity of every section 
of the country; and that is absolutely true. He 
looked forward to this day and saw with prophetic 
eye that the time would come back again when the 
Southland would blossom like the rose and when joy 
and happiness would be round about. That time 
has come. It will continue, and there is a greater 
time ahead of us for our people, if they will care for 
the heritage given to them and not waste it or fritter 
it away. We have stood upon the chivalry of our 
manhood and the purity of our womanhood, and 



280 Oratory of the South 

upon that foundation we have builded a superstruc- 
ture that has towered heavenward and shines in the 
very presence of God above. 



AN APPALACHIAN FOREST RESERVE 

JOSHUA W. CALDWELL 

Of the Knoxville (Tenn.) Bar 

[Condensed from a speech delivered at a convention of 
the Appalachian National Park Association, at Ashville, 
N. C, October 25, 1902.] 

It is my deliberate judgment that an Appalachian 
forest reserve is a matter of more importance to 
the people of the South than any other thing that 
has received their attention since the days of the Civil 
War and Reconstruction. Upon the result of this 
undertaking depends in a large measure the industrial 
future of the fairest part of the South. If there be 
some who think that I exaggerate, I invite them to an 
impartial investigation for themselves. It will be 
found that my words are not stronger than those of 
the competent and disinterested experts in forestry 
and hydrography whom the Federal authorities have 
sent to investigate the subject, and that they are 
fully justified by the facts that have been officially 
recorded. 

What is this Southern Appalachian region, this 
"chief physiographic feature of the eastern half of 
the continent"? It is the mountain country of the 
Virginias, the Carolinas, Kentucky, Tennessee, 
Georgia, and Alabama. It embraces the lovely re- 
gions fitly called "the Land of the Sky" and the 
"Sapphire Country." I may be pardoned for add- 
ing that it also includes east Tennessee and the city 
of Knoxville. No man has seen more beautiful 



Joshua W. Caldwell 281 

things than those southern mountains. How well 
do Ruskin's beautiful words and imagery fit them: 
"Cathedrals of the earth, with their gates of rock, 
pavements of cloud, choirs of streams and stones, 
altars of snow, and vaults of purple, traversed by the 
continual stars." One glory of these mountains is 
their waters, for "no clearer or diviner waters ever 
sang with constant lips of the land which giveth rain 
from heaven." Another glory is their forests, with 
their trees "rooting themselves in inhospitable rocks, 
crowding down together to drink at sweetest streams, 
climbing hand in hand among the difficult slopes, 
gliding in grave procession over the heavenward 
ridges." 

It is the waters and the rivers that we would save, 
for their beauty and for all the benefits which they 
bestow upon men. One may hesitate to plead for 
mere beauty in an age so utilitarian, and yet apart 
from all other considerations it seems to me a dese- 
cration, a crime which cannot be extenuated, to rob 
these mountains of their glorious woods, to dry up 
the springs, to convert the streams into dribbling 
rivulets, save when they are made raging tor- 
rents by the rains that fall on the stripped rocks. 
Those mountains are the homes of the trees, they 
are not fit for plowmen. It is folly, as well as a 
crime, to destroy the trees. The mountains are 
nature's reservoirs of pure water for the uses of 
man. They are not to remain untouched, but to be 
treated wisely, with consideration, and with unfailing 
care. 

We do not ask that the Woodman shall be ex- 
cluded from these forests, only that he shall cull in 
moderation and with judgment. The untold wealth 
of these ancient woods was meant for man, but to be 
used, not abused. A scientific writer says of the 
forests: "Perhaps no other natural agent has done 



282 Oratory of the South 

so much for the human race and has been so reck- 
lessly used and so little understood." 

We have reached the point in America where van- 
dalism in our forests must be checked. Fortunately 
we have seen the evils that the ruthless lumberman 
may do before his invasion of our Southern forest 
has become irresistible, but the wanton destruction 
that he has wrought elsewhere now drives him to us. 
Of the woods of the Appalachian Mountain region 
perhaps one-fourth have disappeared, the remainder 
having been saved by prompt action of Congress. 
Let us not charge all the harm that has been done to 
the strange lumberman. The natives are by no 
means without fault. Thousands of old sedge fields 
scattered through the South attest the incapacity and 
the improvidence of our small farmers. They were 
murdered by perpetual crops of corn. 

In the mountains the belief still prevails that the 
chief end of man and of the earth is to raise corn 
without ceasing. The heavy feeding corn quickly 
devours the soil of the little valleys, and the farmer 
begins to clear the hills. The steep slope is laid bare 
and a bull tongue plow, steer impelled, makes strag- 
gling incisions three inches deep among the rocks 
and stumps. The virgin soil yields fair returns. 
The fall and winter rains wash away the soil that 
has been loosened; the next year the bull tongue 
scratches three inches deeper, and in the fall another 
three inches of soil is washed away. As the soil 
departs the crops decrease, and in five or six years the 
soil is all gone and the plowman must climb higher. 
At last he reaches the limit of his land or of the 
steer's capacity to climb, he has killed the trees, his 
farm has been washed away, and he goes west in 
search of new lands to destroy. Upon the barren 
waste he has made there is nothing to hold the rains 
that fall; the water gathers and rushes into the val- 



Joshua W. Caldwell 283 

ley, the streams are swollen and floods are upon the 
lowlands. 

The scientist tells us that in the streams rising in 
the Appalachian region there are more than one mil- 
lion horsepower yet undeveloped, and I venture to 
say that their estimate is by far too low. Hereto- 
fore the forest, the bed of leaves, and the poorest 
soil have gathered the water, held it in reserve, and 
thus insured the equable flow of the stream. With 
the forests, the leaf beds, and the soil gone, the en- 
tire rainfall rushes at once into the lowlands; there 
are repeated floods in winter and spring, and when 
the dry season comes the reduced springs cannot sup- 
ply the streams. 

Let us understand that no wasteful or even un- 
profitable investment is asked of the government. 
Experience in other countries proves that forest re- 
serves can, in a little while, be made not only self-sup- 
porting, but productive of revenue, and we may thus 
rely, safely, upon the powerful argument of profit; 
not the large but intangible profit of having the land 
and the water power, and the glorious woods, but 
money profit actually paid into the treasury. Mean- 
while the lumberman may go on with his work, not 
without restrictions, but without any unreasonable 
hindrance, so that the lumberman of the next genera- 
tion and of all other generations thereafter may reap 
in these same forests, which, properly used, are in- 
exhaustible. Some of the species of the noble trees 
of this region are, even now, almost extinct. The 
stumps of the black walnut are mined and sold at 
fabulous prices and the cherry Is going the way of 
the walnut. 

Once more, I say, it is a public duty to save our 
forests, the ancient and steadfast protectors of our 
mountains and our waters, and upon us who live 
among the mountains or under their shadows the ob- 



284 Oratory of the South 

ligation is the strongest. The duty that rests upon 
us is clear and imperative, and as we shall be faith- 
ful or unfaithful, we will merit and will have the 
gratitude or the condemnation of posterity. 



TRIBUTE TO CALVIN HENDERSON 
WILEY 

JAMES Y. JOYNER 

Superintendent of Public Instruction of North Carolina 

[Extract from an address delivered at the unveiling of the 
monument to Calvin H. Wiley, at Winston, N. C, Septem- 
ber 9, 1904.] 

Little can the living do for the dead. In vain 
for them do the living speak their words of praise 
and love. In vain for them do the living prepare 
their pomp and pageantry and rear their monuments 
of brass and stone. Monuments, mausoleums, and 
statues to the truly great perpetuate the memory of 
noble deeds, teach the living by great example, and 
incite them to better lives by the record of the virtues 
of the dead. In thus honoring the memory of the 
noble dead the living honor most themselves. 

Only a record of service deserves to be written on 
enduring stone or lasting brass. All other records 
should be and are "in water writ." If unselfish and 
lasting service be the true test of greatness and worth, 
then few that have lived in our generation have so 
richly deserved at our hands the tribute of a monu- 
ment as Calvin Henderson Wiley. His signal service 
to his people, the service that entitles him to a place 
in their hearts forever, is the service in organizing 
and bringing to efficiency the public school system 
of the State. 

Surely the hour had struck in North Carolina when 



James Y. Joyner 285 

a great leader was needed to organize and direct a 
great system of public schools for all the children of 
the State. "The people perished for lack of knowl- 
edge." About one-third of the adult white popula- 
tion of the State were unable to read and write. 
Where was the leader for this great work? 

I believe in the inspiration and the divine call of 
great men to their great work. "Where did Shake- 
speare get his genius? Where did Mozart get his 
music? Whose hand smote the lyre of the Scottish 
plowman and stayed the life of the German priest? 
God, God, and God alone." If ever man was in- 
spired and called of God to a work, Calvin H. Wiley 
seems to me to have been inspired and called to his. 

Yonder in the classic, cultured old town of Ox- 
ford is a young lawyer of fine promise and fine cul- 
ture, a graduate with high honor of the university 
of his State, a man of rare literary taste and attain- 
ment, author already of several books of more than 
average merit and popularity. In the midst of the 
most congenial social and literary surroundings, life 
to him was indeed sweet, and all the skies of his 
future were aglow with the roseate promise of pro- 
fessional and literary fame. Ambition wooed him 
to follow where she pointed the way. But another 
voice is heard, a still, small voice. Things have 
been going badly yonder at the dear old home in 
Guilford. Financial reverses have come, the old 
father has been compelled to surrender a large part 
of the ancestral lands, and now even the roof that 
shelters father and mother and the two young sis- 
ters is endangered by debt. His loved ones need 
him, the voice of duty calls; the young man hears and 
obeys, for he indeed is of that heroic mold "who 
reverenced his conscience as his king." Without a 
murmur, without a moment's hesitation, he turns 
away from the literary visions that lure him on, 



286 Oratory of the South 

leaves his delightful social and intellectual surround- 
ings, returns to the seclusion of the country home of 
his boyhood, and quietly takes up the burden of life 
and of family support on the little remnant of the 
wasted farm. As if to make the struggle harder 
and the sacrifice greater, his political party, the Whig, 
was just coming into power in the nation, and he 
was seeking, with some prospect of success, an ap- 
pointment to a foreign consulship, which would have 
given him means and leisure for the pursuit of his 
cherished literary work. He lays this ambition and 
prospect on duty's altar too. Of such stuff was this 
man made. 

Little knows man what is best to do. "Lead, 
Kindly Light." Ever at his peril man disobeys the 
voice of duty, which is the voice of God. There is 
something tragic, though, in the sacrifice of a cher- 
ished plan and a fond ambition, even at duty's call. 
There is something heroic, too. We can understand 
now what he could not then, how in this sacrifice was 
a blessing for men and for him too, and how through 
it he should be led to a grander mission and a nobler 
fame. 

Thus was Calvin H. Wiley called from the work 
that he had chosen for himself to the work that God 
had chosen for him. Thus was the great leader 
found for the great educational work that the hour 
called for. 

From the hour of his return to the old farm in 
Guilford, a new life, a new career, lay before him, 
a life of long, unselfish service, first to his kindred 
and then to his beloved native State. He returned 
to Guilford in 1849; m l ^S° ne was elected to the 
General Assembly. In the legislature of i850-'5i 
he introduced and advocated in a speech of great 
power and eloquence his bill "To provide for the 
appointment of a superintendent of common schools 



James Y. Joyner 287 

and for other purposes." This was the beginning 
of his public career and of his great service to the 
public schools. The speech in support of his bill 
showed a careful and thorough study of the common 
schools of this State, a clear comprehension of their 
defects and of the remedies for those, and a sur- 
prising knowledge of the successful school systems 
of other States. His bill received a large vote, but 
failed to pass. Dr. Wiley was also a member of 
the General Assembly of i852-'53, and through his 
influence a bill for the appointment of a State superin- 
tendent was introduced by Mr. Cherry, of Bertie. 
This bill was passed, and stands as chapter 1 8 in the 
public acts of 1852. So great had been Dr. Wiley's 
activity in advancing the interests of the schools that, 
without the slightest solicitation on his part, he was 
elected in December, 1852, by a Democratic legis- 
lature, by a large majority State superintendent of 
common schools, though he was a Whig in politics 
and a lawyer by profession. He entered upon his 
duties January 1, 1853. 

He never lost his interest in the public schools. 
With pen and voice he labored for the advancement 
of the people's schools to the day of his death. His 
last service to the cause was that rendered in the es- 
tablishment of the admirable system of graded 
schools here in your own city. Who can forget the 
zeal and enthusiasm with which he labored for their 
establishment, the solicitude with which he watched 
over them, and the wisdom with which, as chairman 
of the first board of trustees, he guided them in their 
early days. There was the tender touch of a 
father's love for a child in his devotion to these 
schools. It is peculiarly fitting that those to whom 
his last service to education was rendered should be 
the first to do tardy justice to his memory by the 
erection of this beautiful monument. It is peculiarly 



288 Oratory of the South 

fitting that this monument should be erected by the 
thousand small offerings of the children of these 
schools. It is peculiarly fitting that the monument 
should stand beside that monument of brick and mor- 
tar yonder erected mainly through his efforts as u 
last service of an old man to a cause for which his 
life was spent. 

Of the beautiful private character of the man I 
need not speak to those among whom he lived so 
long and to whom were daily revealed his gentleness, 
sweetness, courage, friendliness, geniality, cheerful- 
ness, earnestness, and enthusiasm for every good 
work. 

Archibald D. Murphey, "Father of the Common 
Schools," Bartlett Yancey, "Creator of the Literary 
Fund," Calvin Henderson Wiley, "Organizer and 
Maker of the Public School System." Measured 
by length of service and by the practical and far- 
reaching results of his work, shall we not say that the 
greatest of these is Calvin Henderson Wiley? 

For his service he deserves the honor that you pay 
to his memory to-day. For this he shall receive the 
undying gratitude of generations yet unborn as they 
shall learn from history's shining page the everlast- 
ing debt they owe. 

THE DEMOCRACY OF THE SOUTH 

HENRY W. GRADY 

Formerly Editor of the Atlanta Constitution; generally 
recognized as the leading Southern orator of the past 
generation. 

[Condensed from his last public address, delivered before 
the Bay State Club, Boston, December, 1889.] 

It is the pride, I believe, of the South, with her 
simple faith and her homogeneous people, that we 



Henry W. Grady 289 

elevate there the citizen above the party, and the 
citizen above everything. We teach a man that his 
best guide at last is his own conscience, that his 
sovereignty rests beneath his hat, that his own right 
arm and his own stout heart are his best dependence; 
that he should rely on his State for nothing that he 
can do for himself, and on his government for noth- 
ing that his State can do for him ; but that he should 
stand upright and self-respecting, dowering his 
family in the sweat of his brow, loving to his State, 
loyal to his Republic, earnest in his allegiance wher- 
ever it rests, but building at last his altars above his 
own hearthstone and shrining his own liberty in his 
own heart. That is a sentiment that I might have 
been afraid to avow last night. And yet it is mighty 
good Democratic doctrine, too. 

I went to Washington the other day and I stood 
on the Capitol hill and my heart beat quick as I 
looked at the towering marble of my country's 
Capitol, and a mist gathered in my eyes as I thought 
of its tremendous significance, of the armies and the 
treasury and the judges and the President and the 
Congress and the courts, and all that was gathered 
there; and I felt that the sun in all its course could 
not look down on a better sight than that majestic 
home of a Republic that has taught the world its 
best lessons of liberty. 

A few days afterwards I went to visit a friend in 
the country, a modest man, with a quiet country 
home. It was just a simple, unpretentious house, 
set about with great trees and encircled in meadow 
and field rich with the promise of harvest; the 
fragrance of the pink and the hollyhock in the 
front yard was mingled with the aroma of the or- 
chard and the garden and the resonant clucking of 
poultry and the hum of bees. Inside was quiet, 
cleanliness, thrift, and comfort. Outside there 

19 



290 Oratory of the South 

stood my good friend, the master — a simple, in- 
dependent, upright man, with no mortgage on his 
roof, no lien on his growing crops — master of 
his land and master of himself. There was the old 
father, an aged and trembling man, but happy in 
the heart and home of his son. And as he started 
to enter his home the hand of the old man went down 
on the young man's shoulder, laying there the un- 
speakable blessing of an honored and honorable 
father, and ennobling it with the knighthood of the 
fifth commandment. And as we approached the 
door the mother came, a happy smile lighting up her 
face, while with the rich music of her heart she 
bade her husband and her son welcome to their home. 
Beyond was the housewife, busy with her domestic 
affairs, the loving helpmate of her husband. Down 
the lane came the children after the cows, singing 
sweetly, as like birds they sought the quiet of their 
rest. 

So the night came down on that house, falling 
gently as the wing of an unseen dove. And the old 
man, while a startled bird called from the forest and 
the trees thrilled with the cricket's cry, and the stars 
were falling from the sky, called the family around 
him and took the Bible from the table and called 
them to their knees, while he closed the record of 
that day by calling down God's blessing on that 
simple home. 

While I gazed, the vision of the marble Capitol 
faded; forgotten were its treasuries and its majesty; 
and I said: "Surely here in the homes of the people 
lodge at last the strength and the responsibility of 
this government, the hope and the promise of this 
Republic." 

My friends, that is the Democracy of the South; 
that is the Democratic doctrine we preach; a doc- 
trine, sir, that is writ above our hearthstones. We 



Henry W. Grady 291 

aim to make our homes, poor as they are, self-re- 
specting and independent. We try to make them 
temples of refinement, in which our daughters may 
learn that woman's best charm and strength are her 
gentleness and her grace, and temples of liberty in 
which our sons may learn that no power can justify 
and no treasure repay for the surrender of the slight- 
est right of a free individual American citizen. 

You want to know about the South. I just want 
to say that we have had a hard time down there. I 
attended a funeral once in Pickens county in my 
State. A funeral is not usually a cheerful object to 
me unless I could select the subject. I think I could, 
perhaps, without going a hundred miles from here, 
find the material for one or two cheerful funerals. 
Still, this funeral was peculiarly sad. It was a poor 
"one gallus" fellow, whose breeches struck him under 
the armpits and hit him at the other end about the 
knee. They buried him in the midst of a marble 
quarry — they cut through solid marble to make his 
grave — and yet a little tombstone they put above 
him was from Vermont. They buried him in the 
heart of a pine forest, and yet the pine coffin was im- 
ported from Cincinnati. They buried him within 
touch of an iron mine, and yet the nails in his coffin 
and the iron in the shovel that dug his grave were 
imported from Pittsburg. They buried him by the 
side of the best sheep-grazing country on the earth, 
and yet the wool in the coffin bands and the coffin 
bands themselves were brought from the North. 
The South didn't furnish a thing on earth for that 
funeral but the corpse and the hole in the ground. 
There they put him away and the clods rattled down 
on his coffin, and they buried him in a New York 
coat and a Boston pair of shoes and a pair of breeches 
from Chicago and a shirt from Cincinnati, leaving 
him nothing to carry into the next world with him to 



292 Oratory of the South 

remind him of the country in which he lived and for 
which he fought for four years, but the chilled blood 
in his veins and the marrow in his bones. 

Now we have improved on that. We have got 
the biggest marble cutting establishment on earth 
within a. hundred yards of the grave. We have got 
a half-dozen woolen mills right around it, and iron 
mines, and iron furnaces, and iron factories. We 
are coming to meet you. We are going to take a 
noble revenge, as my friend, Mr. Carnegie, said last 
night, by invading every inch of your territory with 
iron, as you invaded ours twenty-nine years ago. 

Now, I want to say one word about the reception 
we had here. It has been a constant revelation of 
hospitality and kindness and brotherhood from the 
whole people of this city to myself and my friends. 
It has touched us beyond measure. 

I was struck with one thing last night. Every 
speaker that arose expressed his confidence in the 
future and lasting glory of this Republic. There 
may be men, and there are, who insist on getting up 
fratricidal strife, and who infamously fan the embers 
of war that they may raise them again into a blaze. 
But just as certain as there is a God in the heavens, 
when those noisy insects of the hour have perished 
in the heat that gave them life, and their pestilent 
tongues have ceased, the great clock of this Republic 
will strike the slow-moving tranquil hours, and the 
watchman from the street will cry, "All is well with 
the Republic; all is well." 

We bring to you, from hearts that yearn for your 
confidence and for your love, the message of fellow- 
ship from our homes. This message comes from 
consecrated ground. The fields in which I played as 
a boy were the battlefields of this Republic, hallowed 
to you with the blood of your soldiers who died in vic- 
tory, and doubly sacred to us with the blood of ours 



Henry W. Grady 293 

who died undaunted in defeat. All around my home 
are set the hills of Kennesaw, all around the moun- 
tains and hills down which the gray flag fluttered to 
defeat, and through which American soldiers from 
either side charged like demigods ; and I do not think 
I could bring you a false message from those old 
hills and those sacred fields — witnesses twenty years 
ago in their red desolation of the deathless valor of 
American arms and the quenchless bravery of Ameri- 
can hearts, and in their white peace and tranquillity 
to-day of the imperishable union of the States and the 
indestructible brotherhood of the American people. 
It is likely that I will not again see Bostonians 
assembled together. I therefore want to take this 
occasion to thank you, and my excellent friends of 
last night and those friends who accompanied us this 
morning, for all that you have done for us since we 
have been in your city, and to say that whenever any 
of you come South just speak your name, and remem- 
ber that Boston or Massachusetts is the watchword, 
and we will meet you at the gates. 

"The monarch may forget the crown 

That on his head so late hath been ; 
The bridegroom may forget the bride 

Was made his own but yestere'en; 
The mother may forget the babe 

That smiled so sweetly on her knee; 
But forget thee will I ne'er, Glencairn, 

And all that thou hast done for me." 



294 Oratory of the South 

RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH: 
PAST AND PRESENT 

CHARLES B. GALLOWAY 

Methodist Bishop of Mississippi 

[Extract from a speech delivered at the dedication of 
Mississippi's new Capitol, June 3, 1903.] 

The final test of Southern character was not dis- 
played in laying the broad foundations of a new 
civilization; not in the solemn but tumultuous coun- 
cils out of which was evolved our great system of 
government; not in the historic halls of state where 
Titans straggled. for mastery over national principles 
and policies; not in the splendid valor of her sons 
in the storm and red rain of terrific battle; not in 
the military genius of her peerless captains, pro- 
nounced by critics to be the greatest marshals of 
modern times; but in their serene fortitude, and un- 
yielding heroism, and unconquerable spirit, after the 
storm of battle had ceased and they were left only 
"the scarred and charred remains of fire and tem- 
pest." I Surpassing the splendor of their courage in 
battle \Vas the grandeur of their fortitude in defeat. 
The sublimest hour in the Southern sojdier's life was 
the time of his pathetic home-coming. I have seen 
the painting representing the returned Confederate 
soldier, which in my judgment is not true to the facts 
of history. He stands, in tattered garments, amid 
the ruins of his home, the gate fallen from its hinges, 
weeds covering the door-step, leaning upon his old 
musket, with a downcast look and a broken heart. 
As a matter of fact, he only waited long enough to 
greet the faithful wife whom he had not seen for 
four stormy years, and kiss the dear children who 
had grown out of his recognition, and then with grim 
determination put his hand to the stern task of re- 



Charles B. Galloway 295 

constructing his once beautiful home and rebuilding 
his shattered fortunes on other and broader founda- 
tions. Men of principle never falter though they 
fail. They felt the bitterness of defeat, but not the 
horrors of despair. How those brave men, the sons 
of affluence, addressed themselves to the grinding 
conditions of sudden and humiliating poverty can 
never be described by mortal tongue or pen. 

And those pitiless years of reconstruction ! Worse 
than the calamities of war were "the desolating furies 
of peace." No proud people ever suffered such in- 
dignities, or endured such humiliation and degrada- 
tion. More heartless than the robber bands that 
infested Germany after the Thirty Years' War were 
the hordes of plunderers, and vultures who fed and 
fattened upon the disarmed and defenseless South. 
Their ferocious greed knew no satiety, and their 
shameless rapacity sought to strip us to the skin. As 
Judge Jere Black, with characteristic vividness and 
vigor, has said: "Their felonious fingers were made 
long enough to reach into the pockets of posterity. 
They coined the industry of future generations into 
cash and snatched the inheritance from children 
whose fathers are unborn. A conflagration, sweep- 
ing over the State from one end to the other, and 
destroying every building and every article of per- 
sonal property, would have been a visitation of mercy 
in comparison to the curse of such a government." 

But no brave people ever endured oppression and 
poverty with such calm dignity and splendid self- 
restraint. And by dint of their own unconquerable 
spirit and tireless toil, they saw their beautiful land 
rise from the ashes into affluence. The South no 
longer "speaks with pathos or sings the miserere." 
She has risen from poverty and smiles at defeat. 
Out of the fire and tempest and baptism of blood 
our State has come undaunted in spirit and with un- 



296 Oratory of the South 

faltering faith in the future. It is said that the 
green grass peacefully waving over the field of 
Waterloo the summer after the famous battle sug- 
gested to Lord Byron, in his "Childe Harold," to 
exclaim : 

"How this red rain has made the harvest grow." 

So every battle-plain that was once furrowed with 
shot and shell and wet with the blood of brothers now 
waves with the abundant harvest of a new and larger 
life. The refluent wave has set in. After a long 
and bitter night the morning dawns. "It is day- 
break everywhere." 

When William McKinley, himself a gallant sol- 
dier, in the magnanimity of his great soul, and voic- 
ing the sentiment of a reunited nation, proposed that 
the government should garland and protect the graves 
of our Confederate dead, the angel of a new apoca- 
lypse swept through our American heavens and sang 
again the song of the Judean hills, "Peace on earth, 
good will to men." This nation is more united in 
heart and hope to-day than ever in its history. The 
honor of our flag is as dear to the sons of the South 
as the North, and wrapped in its glorious folds they 
have been laid to sleep in the same heroic grave. I 
cannot forget that we were 

"One people in our early prime, 
One in our stormy youth, 
Drinking one stream of human thought, 
One spring of heavenly truth," 

and I trust that we may forever fight the battles of 
our God and country under a common flag, on which 
there is a star that answers to the proud name of Mis- 
sissippi. 

And from such a wide national outlook there will 
come immediate and permanent blessing to these 



Charles B. Galloway 297 

Southern States. There is profound political philos- 
ophy in the utterance of a distinguished Mississippi 
statesman, that "the one great need of the South is 
a great national aspiration nationally recognized." 
Let the wide sweep of our horizon take in the whole 
nation. Our domestic troubles may find easier solu- 
tion in the broadening of our sympathies and enlarg- 
ing the field of our political activities. Passion and 
provincialism vanish in a perspective. 

Upon the statue of Benjamin H. Hill in the capi- 
tol at Atlanta, Georgia, a statue erected to that great 
senator, the echoes of whose strangely musical voice 
yet thrills the heart of Southern patriotism like the 
notes of a bugle, are these words, spoken by himself : 
"Who saves his country, saves all things, and all 
things saved will bless him. Who lets his country 
die, lets all things die, and all things dying, curse 
him." 

That sentiment I would engrave upon the heart 
of every young Mississippian, and make it the inspi- 
ration of every patriotic service. One as much be- 
trays his country by disregarding her needs as in de- 
serting her colors. Patriotic activity in public affairs 
is the present and imperial demand upon every Amer- 
ican citizen. And the humblest service, if cour- 
ageously and conscientiously performed, will be of 
infinitely more value to the state than the dignified 
dawdling of some petted lounger in conspicuous 
place. 

I have seen it stated that along the line of the great 
Siberian railway men are stationed at certain short 
distances, each furnished with a green flag by day 
and a green lantern at night. By the waving of 
these the engineers are assured of a clear and safe 
track, and confidently fly over the steel rails with the 
speed of the wind. They are never out of sight of 
a waving flag or a swinging light. Theirs is a mod- 



298 Oratory of the South 

est and monotonous, but a most momentous service. 
Oh, if I can do no more for the land of my love, — 
the land which gave me birth and in whose generous 
bosom I hope to sleep at last, — let me wave a flag 
in the daytime or swing a light in the darkness, for 
the safe and swift passing of her car of triumphal 
progress down the track of centuries. 

My earnest prayer for my native State is, that Mis- 
sissippi may ever rank among the greatest, strongest, 
purest, and most prosperous Commonwealths in this 
mighty nation. And for the nation I have a vision 
"simple in its majesty, sublime in its beauty," best 
described in the eloquent words of our incomparable 
Lucius Q. C. Lamar, "It is that of one grand, 
mighty, indivisible Republic upon this continent, 
throwing its loving arms around all sections, omnipo- 
tent for protection, powerless for oppression; curs- 
ing none, blessing all." 

PROHIBITION IN NORTH CAROLINA 

JETER C. PRITCHARD 

United States Circuit Court Judge, Fourth District of 
North Carolina 

[The concluding part of an address delivered at Wil- 
mington, N. C, March 14, 1908, in opening the State pro- 
hibition campaign.] 

The prohibition sentiment is gaining ground rap- 
idly in every section of this country, and especially 
in the South. There are only thirteen counties in 
Kentucky where whiskey is sold; every barroom in 
the State of Georgia has gone out of business, and 
after next Christmas there will be no more barrooms 
in the States of Alabama and Mississippi. There 
are only four cities and two towns in the State of 
Tennessee where the sale of whiskey is licensed. In 



Jeter O. Pritchard 299 

the State of Florida there are only fourteen counties 
where the sale of whiskey is permitted, and in our 
own State we have prohibition in a large majority 
of the counties, and if we do our duty on the twenty- 
sixth day of May next there will not be a saloon 
left. 

We are informed by those who are opposed to 
prohibition that prohibition will not prohibit. It 
might with equal propriety be insisted that the law 
which prohibits murder does not prohibit, as well as 
all the other laws which undertake to regulate human 
conduct. While these laws do not absolutely pro- 
hibit the commission of crime, they do minimize the 
commission of crime, and if it were not for such laws 
anarchy would reign supreme within our borders. It 
is not contended that by the adoption of the pro- 
hibition law in North Carolina we will be able at 
present to completely close out the blind tigers and 
altogether prevent the drinking of whiskey, but that 
the adoption of such a law will remove the tempta- 
tion of the barroom from our young men, as well as 
the grown-up men of the State who are inclined to 
indulge in the use of intoxicating spirits, cannot be 
denied. 

We are told by some that if we adopt prohibition 
it would deprive them of their personal liberty in that 
respect. Americans are a liberty-loving people, but 
those who are patriotic never desire to exercise this 
right when to do so would be to the detriment of 
their fellow-man. We enjoy liberty to the utmost 
in North Carolina. We have liberty of free speech; 
liberty of the press; we can go into the courts and 
invoke their aid in the enforcement of our rights; 
we are at liberty to belong to any church or to join 
any political party; or to engage in any legitimate 
business without interference on the part of anyone. 
In a word, we have the right to do anything that is 



300 Oratory of the South 

calculated to improve our condition or to advance 
the welfare of our citizens, but when we are asked 
to license certain individuals to engage in the business 
of destroying our young people morally and physi- 
cally ; to wreck our homes and demoralize communi- 
ties and thereby render it impossible to advance the 
cause of religion and education, then the good people 
of our State should in no uncertain tone notify those 
who crave this particular kind of liberty that in the 
future North Carolina will never authorize any indi- 
vidual to engage in a business which can only result 
in disgrace and harm to the human race. 

Among other things, there is involved in this con- 
troversy the question as to whether the people of 
North Carolina prefer the barroom to schoolhouses, 
churches, and other institutions intended for the 
moral and intellectual development of our people. 
We are now afforded an opportunity to decide 
whether we will choose the barroom, with all its evil 
tendencies, in preference to the other class of institu- 
tions I have mentioned. The responsibility for the 
result of the approaching election will rest with the 
voters of the State, and our destiny in this respect is 
trembling in the balance, but I have great confidence 
in the courage and manhood of our people, and I 
feel confident that we will have an exhibition of pa- 
triotism on the day of election which will prove an 
inspiration for all time to come for those who believe 
in those things that are calculated to promote the best 
interests of the American people. 

Whiskey drinking is the greatest evil that con- 
fronts the human race at this time. It stains the 
character, it is the advance agent of poverty and dis- 
tress, it impairs the intellect, it humiliates kindred, 
it alienates friends, and eradicates pride. First it 
exhilarates, then exalts, then banishes responsibility; 



Jeter C. Pritchard 301 

but when the reaction comes the pendulum swings 
just as far the other way. 

It has been truly said that "the debauch is a re- 
morseless creditor and exacts with pitiless extortion 
the utmost farthing. There is no escape from the 
debt, and it can only be discharged in cash and by 
prompt payment, the only legal tender — regret, re- 
morse, and shame. 

"That is the experience of every drunkard, even 
of the genius, the one man who has anything that is 
a stagger of an excuse for overindulging in the flow- 
ing bowl. The world is getting more impatient in 
this behalf daily. The evil is growing less and less, 
and a time will come, sooner than expected, when to 
work a man must not impair his mental and physi- 
cal energies nor bankrupt his moral character by 
drink. 

"A drunken officer on the field of battle is not more 
out of place than a drunken engineer on a railwav 
locomotive. A drunken cashier of a bank is as much 
out of place as a drunken doctor in the sick-room. 
A drunken lawyer in a courthouse is not more out of 
place than a drunken statesman in the legislative 
hall." 

While we are considering prohibition as a State 
issue, it is nevertheless a national issue, and the day 
is not far distant when it will assume such propor- 
tions as to compel Congress to give us absolute and 
unconditional prohibition on every inch of American 
soil. Our efforts in North Carolina, like those of the 
other States, are but the beginning of the end, and 
this great movement, inaugurated as it is by the good 
men and women of this country, will grow in impor- 
tance until our national legislators will be compelled 
to turn aside from the consideration of the tariff, the 
money question, and all the other important questions 
with which they have been dealing and take up this 



302 Oratory of the South 

question which, in my humble judgment, more vitally 
affects the welfare of the home and the fireside than 
any other question now before the American people. 



THE BLUE AND THE GRAY 

WILLIAM O. BRADLEY 
Formerly Governor of Kentucky 

[Condensed from a speech delivered at the dedication of 
the Kentucky Monument in the Chickamauga National 
Park, May 7, 1899. The monument bears the following 
inscription, taken from a message by Colonel Bradley, while 
Governor: "As we are united in life, and they united in 
death, let one monument perpetuate their deeds, and one peo- 
ple, forgetful of all asperities, forever hold in grateful remem- 
brance all the glories of that terrible conflict which made 
all men free and retained every star on the nation's flag."] 

Standing to-day within the shadow of Missionary 
Ridge, whose crest and sides but little more than a 
third of a century ago were lighted with glistening 
bayonets and the fires which flashed from musketry 
and cannon; of Lookout Mountain, where contend- 
ing armies mingled the colors of their uniforms with 
those of the clouds that hung about them; sur- 
rounded by hills and valleys across which swept 
armed legions to victory or defeat; within sight of 
the spot hallowed by the blood of Croxton and 
Helm — a rush of glorious memories comes over us, 
causing each heart to throb more rapidly and each 
bosom to expand with patriotic emotion. Here and 
there are beautiful monuments erected by the various 
States in honor of their gallant sons, and to-day Ken- 
tucky comes, with gentle and loving hand, to unveil 
a tribute to her noble brave, placing upon the graves 
of the dead a wreath of immortelles, and crowning 
alike with laurels the brows of all who survived that 
terrible conflict. 



Williaim O. Bradley 303 

Every land has its traditions, poetry, and song. 
In each some monument, with mute eloquence, pro- 
claims: "Stop, traveler, thou treadest on a hero." 
History, indeed, is but the epitome of patriotism, and 
the whole earth its monument. 

But to be enabled, as our people, to point to nu- 
merous battlefields, where opposing armies of embit- 
tered enemies met in the shock of battle which startled 
the world, and in a third of a century thereafter, 
to behold the remnants of those armies and their de- 
scendants congregating upon this historic spot in one 
common brotherhood, under one flag, each striving 
to do it most honor, this is without a parallel in the 
annals of time, and its like will never be seen again. 
This is the grandest of all monuments: a monument 
composed of love of country and complete reconcilia- 
tion, whose base is as broad as our national domain, 
and from whose summit angels of love and peace 
soar heavenward with each rising sun. 

Many monuments have been erected upon battle- 
fields of this Republic, but it has remained for Ken- 
tucky to be the first of all the States with tender and 
motherly devotion to erect a blended monument to 
all her sons; a monument that carries with it and 
upon it complete reconciliation of all contending pas- 
sions. 

This shaft is dedicated, not alone to those who 
died on this and surrounding fields, but to the gallant 
survivors who, when the frowning clouds of war 
were dispelled by the bright sunshine of peace, re- 
turned to their homes to repair broken fortunes, and 
are to-day numbered among the best and most dis- 
tinguished citizens of the Commonwealth. 

Kentucky has evinced no partiality in this evidence 
of loving remembrance. It carries with it no heart- 
burning, no jealousy, no invidious distinction. It is 
not an emblem of honor to the victor and reproach 



304 Oratory of the South 

to the vanquished — but an equal tribute to the worth 
of all. In future, the descendants of chivalrous 
Confederates may proudly gaze upon it, realizing 
that the State has honored their ancestors, and that, 
although their cause was lost, their heroism is revered 
and their memories perpetuated. And the sons of 
the brave men who fought on the other side may 
look upon it with equal pride, feeling that it fitly 
commemorates the gallant deeds of their illustrious 
ancestors who preserved the nation from destruction. 
May it endure forever, standing guard over victor 
and vanquished, with the statue that surmounts it, 
in one hand holding the torch of liberty shedding 
abroad its benign rays; in the other grasping the 
sword, emblematical of the strength of one people, 
ready and anxious at all times to uphold the integrity 
of one country, and to drive, wounded and bleeding, 
from its shores any insolent foe that shall ever dare 
invade them. 

The heroism of Buckner, Breckenridge, Helm, 
Preston, and Lewis is the inheritance of every man 
who wore the blue. The gallantry of Rousseau, Crit- 
tenden, Whittaker, Croxton, and Price the inherit- 
ance of every man who wore the gray. They were 
all Americans, each, from his standpoint, contending 
for what he believed to be right; and now that we 
are one people in mind and heart, their common glory 
is our common heritage. 

A famous poem represents an imaginary midnight 
review of Napoleon's army. The skeleton of a 
drummer boy arises from the grave and with bony 
fingers beats a long, loud reveille. At the sound the 
legions of the dead Emperor come from their graves, 
from every quarter where they fell. From Paris, 
from Toulon, from Rivoli, from Lodi, from Hohen- 
linden, from Wagram, from Austerlitz, from the 
cloud-capped summits of the Alps, from the shadows 



William O. Bradley 305 

of the Pyramids, from the snows of Moscow, from 
Waterloo — they gather in one vast array, with Ney, 
McDonald, Massena, Duroc, Kleber, Murat, Soult, 
and other marshals in command. Forming, they si- 
lently pass in melancholy procession before the Em- 
peror, and are dispersed with France as the password 
and St. Helena as the challenge. 

Imagine the resurrection of the two great armies 
of the Civil War. We see them arising from Get- 
tysburg, from the Wilderness, from Shiloh, from 
Missionary Ridge, from Stone River, from Chicka- 
mauga — yea, from an hundred fields — and passing, 
with their great commanders, in review before our 
martyred President. In their faces there is no dis- 
appointment, no sorrow, no anguish, but they beam 
with light and hope and joy. With them there is no 
St. Helena, no exile, and they are dispersed with 
Union as the challenge and Reconciliation as the 
password. 

The monument dedicated to-day may, in the rush 
of years, crumble and fall into dust, but around the 
summits of Lookout and Missionary Ridge, like 
gathering mists, shall remain forever the memories 
of these historic fields, and in every heart shall be a 
monument of love, and strength, and patriotism, 
which will perpetuate, through all coming time, the 
glories of that great conflict. 

Looking into the future, may not the fond hope 
be indulged that in the end our country may, in all 
things, be deliberate, just, and wise; that our flag 
may wave in triumph, feared by tyrants, in every 
land and on every- sea ; that beneath its folds shall 
gather the oppressed of every clime, and the slave 
struggling beneath the rod of oppression feel his 
chains grow lighter, his heart leap with joy, and hail 
its colors as a deliverance; that nations which have 
been bitten by the serpent of rapacity and conquest 



306 Oratory of the South 

shall look upon its folds and be healed, as those who, 
with faith, looked upon the brazen serpent that was 
lifted up in the wilderness. God grant that ours shall 
be the victory of enlightenment and liberty, the tri- 
umph of right over might, of justice over injustice, 
of humanity over cruelty and oppression, until em- 
pires shall have passed away and the nations of earth 
become one. 



SOUTH CAROLINA AND CIVIL WAR 

JOSEPH A. M'CULLOUGH 

Of the Greenville (S. C.) Bar 

[Extract from a speech on "South Carolina's Contribution 
to the Civilization of the Past," delivered at the annual din- 
ner of the South Carolina Society, New York City, March 
18, 1907.] 

In reading just the other day a very interesting 
serial now running in the Atlantic Monthly, "The 
Spirit of the Old West Point," Morris Shaff says : 
"As early as 1851 South Carolina and Mississippi, in 
their provincial egotism, had threatened secession." 
One would infer from this that South Carolina and 
Mississippi originated the doctrine. Mr. Shaff does 
not call attention to the fact that in taking this step 
South Carolina only put into practice the precepts of 
Samuel Adams, Josiah Quincy, and others equally 
as illustrious, and but followed the example of Mas- 
sachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, which 
States as early at 18 14 held secession conventions and 
elected delegates to a General Conference which met 
in Hartford, and which convention also had repre- 
sentatives from the States of New Hampshire and 
Vermont. He does not mention the fact that she but 
followed the later example of Massachusetts, which, 



Joseph A. McCixllough 307 

in 1845, when Texas was seeking for admission into 
the Union, declared that if the measure were success- 
ful it would tend to drive the Northern States into a 
dissolution of the Union. He does not tell us that 
after South Carolina passed the ordinance of seces- 
sion, Horace Greeley, Wendell Phillips, and others 
recognized her right so to do. 

This was the argument: Great Britain had de- 
clared each colony by name a sovereign and independ- 
ent State; that sovereignty was not relinquished by 
either the articles of confederation or the Constitu- 
tion, but, on the contrary, was carefully preserved, 
both by the manner of their ratification and in express 
language. Those clauses of the Constitution which 
gave to the Federal Court jurisdiction in all "cases" 
arising under the Constitution and the laws of the 
United States, as clearly shown by Calhoun, applied 
only to a technical case in which there was a plain- 
tiff on one side and a defendant on the other. A sov- 
ereign State could not be sued and, therefore, said 
clause could have no application to it. If a govern- 
ment or a single department of government could in- 
terpret finally its own powers or take without hin- 
drance what power it pleased, it may as well originally 
have been invested with all power without the mock- 
ery of verbal limitations. If the Federal Govern- 
ment, in its entirety, had no authority to judge of 
the extent of its own powers, how could a single de- 
partment of that government have such authority? 
If the court itself could not be constrained by its own 
precedents, how could it be expected that a sovereign 
State could be so constrained? If the States were 
sovereign originally and never parted with that sov- 
ereignty, then it necessarily followed that the sov- 
ereign was the judge of its own powers, compacts, 
and agreements. No man is a rebel or traitor who 



308 Oratory of the South 

fights in defense of his sovereign; that man alone 
is a rebel and a traitor who refuses so to fight. 

Moved by these arguments, the South considered 
the army of the North an invasion; and she there- 
fore fought not in defense of slavery, but in defense 
of her homes and her firesides. It was for this reason 
that Timrod did not cry in vain: 

"Hold up the glories of thy dead, 
Say how thy elder children bled, 
And point to Eutaw's battle bed — 
Carolina. 

"Tell how the patriot's soul was tried, 
And what his dauntless breast defied, 
How Rutledge ruled and Laurens died. 
Carolina. 

"Cry till thy summons heard at last, 
Shall sound like Marion's bugle blast, 
Re-echoed from a haunted past, 
Carolina." 

New York had double the military population of 
South Carolina, while New Hampshire was slightly 
greater, yet from this small State the South Caro- 
linians who shouldered arms outnumbered the New 
Hampshire men more than two to one and exceeded 
New York's quota by more than 29,000. In South 
Carolina thirty-seven out of every forty-two were 
able to enlist and fight, and they did so. Time for- 
bids that I should recount the acts of heroism which 
characterized her sons in that memorable struggle. 

"Countless eyes have conned their story, 
Countless hearts grown brave thereby, 
Let us thank the God of glory, 
We had such to die." 

At the battle of First Manassas General Bee, who 
was on Jackson's right, rode up to him and with de- 



Joseph A. McCullough 309 

spairing bitterness exclaimed, "General, they are 
beating us back." "Then," said Jackson, calm and 
curt, "we will give them the bayonet." Bee seemed 
to catch the inspiration of his determined will, and, 
galloping back to the broken fragments of his over- 
tasked command, exclaimed to them: "There is 
Jackson standing like a stone wall. Rally behind 
the Virginians. Let us determine to die here and we 
will conquer. Follow me." At this trumpet call a 
few score of his men re-formed their ranks. Placing 
himself at their head, he charged the dense mass of 
the enemy and in a moment fell dead with his face to 
the foe. From that time Jackson's was known as 
the "stone wall brigade," a name henceforward im- 
mortal and belonging to all ages, and well may it 
cling to them, for it was born amid the throes of a 
death struggle and was baptized in the blood of one 
of the bravest and truest of men. 

In the first years of the last century a memorable 
battle was fought upon the plains of the Danube. 
A determined charge upon the Austrian center won 
the day for France. That charge was due very 
largely to the heroism and example of a private 
soldier, who there fell. Afterwards, upon the 
annual parade of his battalion, when the name of 
Latour Duvergne was first called, the oldest ser- 
geant stepped slowly to the front, and, with head 
uncovered, answered, "Died upon the field of 
battle." In the Valhalla beyond the grave, where 
the spirits of warriors are assembled, when upon the 
roll of heroes the name of Barnard Bee is reached, 
it is reserved for the immortal shade of Jackson to 
step forward and answer, "Died fighting by my side 
in defense of his country's rights." 

Then there is the brave and courtly Butler, the in- 
trepid Gary, and that "noblest Roman of them all," 
Wade Hampton, whose last words but breathed the 



310 Oratory of the South 

spirit of his life, "My people, white and black, God 
bless them all!" 

I am not here to discuss the race problem, but I 
am here to say that if there be such a problem pecu- 
liar to the South alone, which I very much doubt, 
then it can only be solved in the spirit of this prayer, 
and I believe this spirit is general throughout the 
South. It cannot be solved by legislation — that 
method was proven a failure by the adoption of the 
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Con- 
stitution. People cannot be prepared in a moment — 
in the twinkling of an eye — for the discharge of the 
high and responsible duties of citizenship by the 
magic of law. Neither can it be solved by force and 
violence. Mob law is no cure for brutality, but only 
aggravates it by brutalizing those who participate 
in it. 

Patience, education, religion — the application of 
these will solve all problems and cure all the evils of 
society in the fullness of time, and the South is keep- 
ing pace with any other section of this Union in these 
acquirements and accomplishments. 

The South recognizes that the result of the war 
was in accordance with the Divine Will, and that 
God is more wise in his purposes than man is in the 
formation of his compacts and agreements. Nations 
are unconsciously impelled towards the accomplish- 
ment of purposes of which they little dreamed, and 
this too often in spite of constitutional provisions 
and what are conceived to be fundamental principles 
of government. Take the Louisiana Purchase and 
the acquisition of the Philippine Islands as examples. 

To-day no people are more loyal to the Stars and 
Stripes than are we of South Carolina. 

It happened at the Field Hospital of Guasimas. 
Richard Harding Davis is authority for the incident. 
A half dozen Americans lay there wounded. A con- 



Joseph A. McCullough 311 

tinual chorus of moans rose through the tree branches 
overhead. The surgeons, with arms bared and hands 
dripping and clothes literally saturated with blood, 
were preparing the wounded for the journey down to 
Siboney. It was a doleful group. Amputation and 
death stared its members in their gloomy faces. Sud- 
denly a voice started softly : 

"My country, 'tis of thee, 
Sweet land of liberty, 
Of thee I sing," — 

Other voices took it up : 

"Land where our fathers died, 
Land of the pilgrim's pride " 



The quivering, quavering chorus, punctuated by 
moans and made spasmodic by pain, trembled up 
from that little group of wounded Americans in the 
midst of the Cuban solitude, the pluckiest, the most 
heartfelt song that human voices ever sang. There 
was one voice that did not quite keep up with the 
others. It could not be heard until the others had 
finished with the line: "Let freedom ring"; then 
halting, struggling, faint, it repeated slowly: 

"Land — of — the pilgrim's pride — 
Let — freedom " 

The last word was a woeful cry. One more son 
had died as died the fathers, but with this differ- 
ence — he died in defense of that flag his father 
fought. 



312 Oratory of the South 

THE THIRD HOUSE 

FREDERICK W. LEHMAN 

Of the St. Louis (Mo.) Bar 

[Extract from a Commencement address at the Missouri 
State University, June 6, 1906.] 

The deterioration of public morals since the War 
is not due to the degeneracy of the people, but to the 
intrusion of the lobby, and all it represents, as an ag- 
gressive force into public affairs. It is this which 
prevents our government of the people and for the 
people from being in full sense a government by the 
people, and, to the extent of its malign efficiency, 
marks the difference in our private and public stand- 
ards of integrity. 

The function of government is essentially restric- 
tive. "Thou shalt not" is the ordinary command- 
ment of the law. Opposition to the public will, there- 
fore, means usually rather to prevent than to procure, 
and to delay is for the time equivalent to success. 
The various special interests which have to gain or 
lose by legislation are coming continually into closer 
alliance. Public utility companies are being amalga- 
mated; the large shippers and the carriers feel de- 
pendent upon one another; life insurance companies 
are investors in different enterprises; the same men 
are shareholders in many companies, and thus is cre- 
ated an extensive community of interests, which gives 
to each in its dealings with the lawmakers the full 
power of all. 

The members of the lobby representing these inter- 
ests do not work in the open, nor by the methods of 
public discussion. They attend upon the legislature 
when it convenes, and continue with it to its close. 
They influence its organization to the minutest detail. 
The humblest clerk of the humblest committee is not 



Frederick W. Lehman 313 

beyond their providence and care. They side with 
the majority, but have a strong leaning to the mi- 
nority, for they know that the minority may become 
the majority. They are clever, capable, and unscru- 
pulous; of sociable disposition and engaging man- 
ners. They have a keen insight into the vices and 
foibles of men; have misread history enough to be- 
lieve with Walpole, that "all men have their price," 
and are learned enough in the law to fully under- 
stand the constitutional guarantee against self-incrim- 
ination. They establish pleasant social relations with 
legislators, but in their utmost cordiality are coldly 
calculating results. They bestow favors with a free 
hand, but with a day of reckoning ever in mind. 
They traffic in the most intimate confidences, and will 
exploit the weaknesses they discover, either by pan- 
dering to them or by exposing them. Skilled in the 
mendacity of hint and insinuation, they speed the 
work of debauching their victims by constant dispar- 
agement of the men who are above their reach. If 
at last the subtler modes of corruption fail, they re- 
sort to the gross venality of bribery. Of course such 
men are not of good character, but to be efficient they 
must be of fair reputation. 

The essential truth of these statements is admit- 
ted, and the methods described, saving that of direct 
bribery, are justified by those who employ them. 

Andrew Hamilton, chief lobbyist of the great life 
insurance companies, has published an elaborate de- 
fense of his course. From one company alone he had 
received for lobby purposes an average of a hundred 
thousand dollars a year for the past seven years. 

Why would not publicity serve every purpose of 
the companies? Mr. Hamilton speaks of their busi- 
ness as constituting "the most extensive commercial 
interests in the world." He might have added what 
was more to the purpose of the question he was con- 



314 Oratory of the South 

sidering, that it was the most popular business in this 
country. More of our people are directly interested 
in it than in any other one business. There are more 
policyholders than farmers in the United States. The 
majority of our men who have any regard for those 
dependent upon them make some provision for them 
in the shape of life insurance. The aggregate of in- 
demnity covered by the policies in force in our va- 
rious companies amounts to twenty billions of dollars, 
and the policies number twenty-one millions. The 
companies are mere trustees of the assured. No 
burden can be laid upon them, no injustice can be 
done them, which does not either increase the burden 
of the policyholders or impair the provision they 
have made for their families. It is impossible to 
conceive of a deliberate popular purpose to injure a 
business of this character. The business itself having 
thus the marked approval of the public, nothing more 
was needed to commend the companies themselves to 
the public than honesty and publicity in management. 
And yet it is asserted that for years they have been 
threatened with oppressive and ruinous legislation, 
and that twenty millions of policyholders elect men 
to make laws that would, in their effect, destroy the 
provision they have made for their families, not with- 
out great sacrifice and self-denial. The voting power 
of the country is in the hands of the men who really 
own the insurance business, and who would suffer 
most from its destruction. But instead of informing 
these men that their interests were threatened, and 
appealing to them publicly to act in defense of them- 
selves, this confidential secret service was organized 
in every State of the Union, and their ways were dark 
because their deeds were evil. Publicity came in 
spite of the efforts to prevent it, because the corrup- 
tion within had grown to proportions past conceal- 
ment, and now, with the truth laid bare, we see what 



Frederick W. Lelmian 315 

a libel upon the intelligence and integrity of the 
people was this confidential secret service. Now, and 
for the first time in years in company management 
and in legislation, is the business recognized for its 
noble utility, and the company relegated to its place 
as a mere agency for its proper conduct. 

Another interest conspicuous in the lobby — stand- 
ing indeed at its head — is the railroad; and I venture 
to say that it has as little real need of the lobby as 
the life insurance company. Here again the business 
is a popular one, whether the companies that conduct 
it are so or not. The life of our railroad system is 
seventy-six years. It has grown during that time 
from nothing to three hundred thousand miles of 
track, with a capitalization above fifteen billions of 
dollars. The welfare and progress of the country 
are dependent upon the development and extension 
of its means of transportation, and this fact has al- 
ways been recognized by our people. Aid in every 
form, land grants, taxes, municipal bonds, popular 
subscriptions, has been freely given for the construc- 
tion of the roads, and the legislation concerning the 
companies has been marked by the utmost liberality. 
The powers and privileges conferred were ample for 
every purpose. For forty years there was no re- 
strictive State legislation as to freight rates, and for 
fifty-seven years there was no Congressional regula- 
tion, which was tantamount to a declaration that 
transportation between the States should be free of 
governmental control. And yet the railroad com- 
pany has, and for years has had, its lobbyists working 
to prevent what is called adverse and ruinous legisla- 
tion. Instead of appealing to the public intelligence 
against laws which, if bad, would harm the people 
more than the companies, sinister influences were re- 
sorted to, and the public will was thwarted, while the 
public opinion was not changed. 



316 Oratory of the South 

In the ranks of the lobby the railroad representa- 
tive is easily the first, because of a peculiar gift he 
possesses — the pass. Our people travel much. They 
travel much on pleasure, and more on business, and 
here is one who, whenever they set out, comes along 
with his train and graciously proffers a seat. It is a 
mere kindness, a courtesy, if you please, as if your 
neighbor with his wagon overtook you while walking, 
and offered you a seat by his side. There is no 
bargaining about it, nothing stipulated for in return, 
and nothing expected, except a reciprocation of the 
courtesy, which, as it cannot be in kind, must be in 
something else. There is a timeliness about it all 
that is suggestive. The wagon never fails to be on 
the road when a convention or legislative body is as- 
sembling, and there need be no walking delegates in 
our politics. The use of the pass, somewhat restricted 
at first, has grown until every man believed to be of 
any significance in public affairs may have one for 
the taking. In this State, in every State of the 
Union, are men enjoying great prominence and pos- 
sessing great power, simply because they have passes 
to distribute. They are not students of economic 
questions, they are not men of public spirit, they are 
without achievement in any calling, they have no 
charm of eloquence — they have simply the gift of 
the pass. Assassination, it is said, never changed 
the course of history; bribery never did so, and 
neither has the pass done so; but they have each and 
all of them greatly hindered and retarded progress, 
and made more difficult the work of reform ; and of 
the three, if they be three, the pass has been the most 
potent. 

What basis is there for the charge of popular prej- 
udice against the railroad companies? It did not 
exist in the beginning. For the greater portion of 
their existence they were left free to order their own 



Frederick W. Lehman 317 

affairs. Our people are not moved by abstractions. 
They do not assert the power of control for the mere 
sake of asserting it. They believed there were griev- 
ances which demanded redress, that the liberty al- 
lowed was being grossly abused. The public charac- 
ter of the companies was asserted when the power of 
eminent domain and the taxing power of the State 
were invoked, and it was denied when the use of the 
transportation facilities was demanded for all upon 
equal terms. Special and discriminating rates were 
given to individuals and to localities, one man or one 
community was favored at the expense of another, 
and this was continued for so long that, when at last 
it was challenged, it was insisted upon by the com- 
panies as a rightful exercise of their powers. To 
maintain these evils, an evil system of controlling 
public action was employed, and the advocate of the 
railroads was called into service, not upon the hust- 
ings to influence the opinions of the people, but in the 
legislative lobbies to determine the votes of their rep- 
resentatives. 

The result of experiment amply justifies govern- 
mental supervision and regulation of every business 
in which men are constrained by the methods of mod- 
ern life to have part, and into which they cannot 
make scrutiny for themselves, but must deal upon 
faith. Liberty, where others are involved, must be 
regulated by law. As well talk of humanity revert- 
ing to the savagery of the Stone Age as going back 
in government to the simple ways of the early Repub- 
lic. The old question, "Am I my brother's keeper?" 
must be answered more emphatically than ever in the 
affirmative. 

Patriotism is a universal duty, and upon none does 
it rest with more serious obligation than upon the 
scholar. "The whole art of politics," said Jeffer- 
son, "consists in being honest." Not that honesty 



318 Oratory of the South 

of itself will discover the solution of every politi- 
cal and economical problem, but honesty does meas- 
ure the full duty of man, and when the problems of 
life are addressed with a single purpose to find their 
right solution, the task is more than half accom- 
plished. But this honesty must be active, and not 
passive. It must engage in the work of citizenship, 
and not stand aloof. The day of romance in our 
history may be gone, but life has not lost its worth. 
Its demands will be even more exacting and more ex- 
alting, it will require ever more the sacrifice that 
makes no spectacle, the well-doing that wins no ap- 
plause. This nation has withstood the shock of for- 
eign war, and the greater shock of bloody dissension 
among its own people. It need not fear either the 
invasion or the immigration of Goth or Hun or Van- 
dal. There is for it a Yellow Peril, but its menace is 
not from the Orient. Its dangers come from its own 
people, and with them are all the hopes of its deliv- 
erance. 

THE MAGNA CHARTA 

URIAH M. ROSE 

Of the Little Rock (Ark.) Bar; formerly President of the 
American Bar Association 

[The concluding part of an address before the Pennsyl- 
vania State Bar Association, June 25, 1901.] 

Of all the triumphs of light over darkness the 
Magna Charta stands conspicuous. In this hetero- 
genous world few are the great triumphs that are 
not stained with blood, and that do not bring in their 
train some kind of disappointment or disaster. But 
the revolution inaugurated by the Magna Charta 
was the greatest and the most peaceful that has ever 
been known. No revolutionary tribunal was estab- 



Uriah M. Rose 319 

lished in Westminster Hall, no guillotine erected at 
Charing Cross. The Tower was not destroyed by a 
howling mob, intent on murder, to fix the date of an 
anniversary for national rejoicing. The school for 
kings endowed at Runnymede has been perpetuated; 
it represents the law, and is only terrible for the ene- 
mies of liberty. 

Strange thoughts come to one that looks at the an- 
cient Charter in the British Museum. Shakespeare 
puts into the mouth of Jack Cade these words: 

"Is not this a lamentable thing, 
That of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made 

parchment ; 
That parchment being scribbled o'er, should undo a man?" 

So this parchment on which the Great Charter is 
written is the skin of an innocent lamb that once 
bleated in the English fields, which being scribbled 
o'er with words of magical import, written in a lan- 
guage long since dead, while it brought the heads of 
Laud and Strafford and Charles to the block, has 
given life and hope to the oppressed, has opened the 
prison door for the persecuted and the friendless, and 
shall do so again for all generations, world without 
end. What a strange potency in this little sheet of 
parchment. A breath of wind might blow it away. 
But the head of the church on earth had invoked the 
wrath of heaven upon it, kings had renounced it, 
physical fire had charred it, and in the irony of fate a 
pair of tailor's shears had threatened it; and yet here 
it remains, powerful and indestructible as ever, an- 
nouncing its deathless and indelible message, speaking 
from eternity to eternity. This little sheet of shriveled 
parchment has revolutionized the history of the 
world. Without it the growth of England and the 
political existence of America would never have been. 

If we confine our attention to England alone how 



320 Oratory of the South 

great has been the change! Standing to-day on the 
battlements of the Norman keep at Windsor one 
sees unrolled before him a rural landscape of wide 
extent, whose quiet beauty is not surpassed the whole 
world over. The castle, gray with age, is the most im- 
posing relic of the feudal time ; the home of the Eng- 
lish sovereigns for eight hundred years. Its massive 
bastions and towers produce an impression of 
strength, reminding us that here for ages the prin- 
ciple of monarchy has symbolized itself in enduring 
stone. But the prison beneath, where Lady Bramber 
and her son were starved to death, where a Scottish 
king and many others pined in captivity in the ages 
gone by, is tenantless; and all around on the open 
lawns the green grass, the unfolding flowers, the 
waving trees, the clinging vines, the absence of mili- 
tary signs and emblems, declare that if this is the 
home of royalty, it is the home of a royalty that is no 
longer an object of dread and terror, but a royalty 
which, however high, is peacefully sheltered under 
the wing of the law. As the eye wanders where the 
gleaming river cleaves its emerald banks, two vil- 
lages are seen near together, some miles away. These 
are the villages of Egham and Staines. Between 
Staines and Windsor the silver current of the river 
is seen to divide so as to enclose a small island, a gem 
set in its rim of shining waters. On the island a 
cottage from which a column of white smoke curls 
upward in the sunshine above a clump of trees. Well 
may the eye rest on that vision with a sense of pride 
and rapture, for there the greatest victory of all 
time was won; and a glory hovers over that field 
that never shone even on Marathon, for that island 
is Magna Charta Island, and the valley is the valley 
of Runnymede. Peaceful as it seems to-day, it was 
there that the embattled barons marshaled their 
hosts and held King John at bay. 



Uriah M. Rose 321 

The long series of councils held at Runnymede, 
known now only by vague tradition, were closed when 
the barons dispersed. They had builded better than 
they knew; and humanity had been baptized into a 
higher life. Kings and priests might say what they 
pleased ^ about the great Charter; but, being once 
sealed, it entered on an independent existence of its 
own. The mighty words once spoken could never be 
recalled. Henceforth the Charter was a part of 
man's inalienable inheritance. Generations would 
come and go, but the work of the barons was like 
the Bass Rock, around which the northern seas may 
rage and break in vain. The indispensable doctrine 
of personal liberty came into the world, like Minerva, 
full armed from the brain of Jupiter. The very 
phrases of the Great Charter remain our watchwords 
yet. It is not only in England and its vast posses- 
sions, and in America, that its stimulating influence 
has been felt — other nations have kindled their 
torches at this great beacon light. It has built up 
many things of priceless value, and has destroyed 
many things that needed to be destroyed. It was the 
clarion blast that announced, though afar off, the de- 
cay and death of the feudal system, the coming of a 
new order of things, when the shackles should fall 
from serf and retainer, when the people should ap- 
pear on the scene of action and take charge of the 
helm of state ; and when the proudest claim of baron 
or king should be subordinate to the majesty of the 
law. It foretold the day when liberty should be the 
birthright of every child that is born, and when every 
man and woman should have the right to worship 
God according to the dictates of conscience. It in- 
augurated freedom of speech and that reign of free 
institutions which, transplanted to all parts of the 
globe, have proved to be equally well suited to every 
zone and to every climate. 

21 



322 Oratory of the South 

No one can sum up the debt we owe to the Magna 
Charta, the one great product of the Middle Ages. 
We look back with feelings of aversion and pity to 
that dark and troubled period; to its insane crusades, 
to its fanatical intolerance, to its pedantic and barren 
literature, to its scholastic disputes, to its cruelty, ra- 
pine, and bloodshed. But the genius that presides 
over human destiny never sleeps ; and it was precisely 
in that most sterile and unpromising age that the 
groundwork was laid for all that is valuable in mod- 
ern civilization. As an unborn forest sleeps uncon- 
sciously in an acorn's cup, all the creations and all the 
potentialities of that civilization lay enfolded in the 
guaranty of personal liberty and of the supremacy 
of the law that was secured at Runnymede. The 
various bills and petitions of right, and the Habeas 
Corpus Act, while they have given new sanctions to 
liberty, are but echoes of the Great Charter; and our 
Declaration of Independence is but the Magna 
Charta writ large, and expanded to meet the wants 
of a new generation of freemen, fighting the battle 
of life beneath other skies. 

"Worth all the classics !" Yes, the classics that 
have survived, and the classics that have perished. 
Dear as might be to us the lost books of Livy, whose 
pictured page is torn just where its highest interest 
begins, or some song of Homer, which, now lost in 
space, shall charm the ear and bewitch the human 
heart no more, we could not exchange for them a 
single word of those uncouth but grand old sentences, 
which, having taken the wings of the morning, have 
incorporated themselves with almost every system of 
laws in Christendom, and which still ring out in our 
American constitutions with a sound like that of the 
trampling of armed men marching confidently up 
to battle ; words which for ages have stayed the hand 
of tyranny, and which have extended their protection 



Edward W. Carmack 323 

over the infant sleeping in its cradle, over the lonely, 
the desolate, the sorrowful, and the oppressed. Ut- 
tered by unwilling lips, and believed by the wretch 
from whom it was extorted that it had scarcely an 
hour to live, the Magna Charta marks an epoch in 
the annals of mankind. It began a revolution that 
has never gone backward for a single moment, and 
was the precursor of that civilization the dawn of 
which our eyes have looked upon with joy and pride 
and whose full meridian splendor can be foreseen by 
God alone. 



EULOGY OF WILLIAM B. BATE 

EDWARD W. CARMACK 

United States Senator from Tennessee 

[Condensed from a memorial address on the life, char- 
acter, and public services of Hon. William R. Bate, late a 
Senator from the State of Tennessee, delivered in the United 
States Senate, January 17, 1907.] 

Mr. President: 

It is with a feeling of peculiar tenderness and rev- 
erence that I approach the sad duty of this occasion. 
I was born within a mile of General Bate's home- 
stead, lived among his friends and neighbors, listened 
with rapt attention to stories of camp and conflict 
as they fell from the lips of the heroic veterans who 
were his followers and comrades in battle, and from 
my early boyhood was deeply: imbued with the spirit 
of personal devotion to him that prevailed among 
the people of his native county. In later years cir- 
cumstances brought us much together, and I became 
his personal friend and supporter in all his political 
contests. My personal knowledge of the man re- 
vealed inborn qualities which strengthened my love 



324 Oratory of the South 

for him and held it to the last; and the affectionate 
relations that have existed and do exist between our 
families are among the most precious blessings of life. 
Mr. President, if in youth one could be permitted 
to shape the end of his life he could not wish for it a 
happier termination than that which closed the mor- 
tal career of William B. Bate. Full of years, full of 
fame, and full of honors, he closed a life crowned 
with domestic peace and happiness, the esteem and 
confidence of his people, and that conscientiousness of 
duty faithfully done which more than all things else 
gives sweetness to life and takes bitterness from death. 
By the sternest code of honor he lived a life of recti- 
tude. It is no exaggeration to say that neither to the 
right nor to the left, under whatever temptation, 
throughout a long life, full of action, full of excite- 
ment, full of strivings and honorable ambitions, did 
he ever swerve by the breadth of a hair from the 
path of honor. In addition to all this, and higher 
and better than all this, the Christian's faith and 
hope were his; so that his peaceful death, met with 
a calm and quiet resignation, was a fitting close to 
such a life, a happy realization of the prophet's 
prayer, "Let me die the death of the righteous, and 
let my last end be like his." He died as one who 
knew that the gates of death were but the portals of 
immortal life. 

William B. Bate was born in the old blue-grass 
county of Sumner, a county still famed for the sterl- 
ing character of its citizenship and the generous hos- 
pitality of its people. The world cannot produce a 
nobler type of men and women than may there be 
found. They are worthy of the ancestry from whom 
they sprang. General Bate was the son of a Revo- 
lutionary soldier and came from the old pioneer 
stock who in the early history of the State invaded 
this region with ax and rifle to hew through the pri- 



Edward W. Carmack 325 

meval forests a pathway for civilization. They 
were men of heroic heart and simple faith. A faith 
in God that knew no doubts or questionings gave 
them the fortitude to dare the terrors of the wilder- 
ness. On the frontiers of civilization, struggling with 
wild beasts and with yet wilder men, they acquired 
the fundamental qualities that go to make the manners 
and the character of a gentleman — respect for one's 
self and for others. General Bate was born near Old 
Bledsoe's Lick and within sight of the old fort where 
the early settlers found protection while yet the white 
man had to make good his title to the land against 
his savage foe. Here he spent the years of his boy- 
hood until — a fatherless lad — he determined to go 
forth alone to match himself against the world. He 
early developed a taste for politics, and as a member 
of the legislature and Presidential elector on the 
Breckinridge-Lane ticket he began his political ca- 
reer, a career which had already given promise of 
greatness when interrupted by the outbreak of the 
War of Secession. 

In politics he lived and died a Democrat — not 
simply in the sense that he supported the nominees 
of his party, but because he was a thorough believer 
in its great fundamental principles. Like the late 
Isham G. Harris, he clung with tenacity to his party's 
earliest creed and felt a sense of resentment for every 
deviation from the Jeffersonian principle of a strict 
construction of the Constitution. 

In his service here he was faithful, industrious, 
diligent, a close student of the business of the Sen- 
ate, having a clear understanding of the questions of 
the day, and when he chose to do so he presented his 
views with great ability, learning, and power. A 
speech on the tariff question in the early years of his 
service showed him to be a profound student of na- 
tional taxation, and his speech upon what, in our 



326 Oratory of the South 

part of the country, was usually denominated the 
"force bill," was liberally quoted from one end of the 
land to the other. 

But above all other qualities, he bore among his 
associates here a reputation for honor and integrity 
that was without a stain. No suspicion of an un- 
worthy motive was ever imputed to any act of his. 
No man here or elsewhere ever felt one moment's 
doubt as to the absolute rectitude of his intentions. 

It is a fact significant of the happy passing of old 
issues, of old passions and prejudices, that among the 
most devoted friends he had in this Chamber were 
those who wore the blue when he wore the gray, who 
fought under the Stars and Stripes when he fought 
under the Stars and Bars; with whom he contended 
for life and death in the awful shock of battle. There 
are no truer friends than those who have been hon- 
orable foes, and the handclasp that is made above 
the grave of kindred dead is never broken. Even 
as he loved and honored those who fought by his 
side, he loved and honored those who confronted 
them. And while old associations, the memory of 
common sorrows and of common sufferings, bound 
him as with hooks of steel to his comrades in arms, 
the story of that great war was to him a lesson of 
American prowess and American valor, which, united 
under a common flag, could withstand the world in 
arms. The Confederacy had no braver knight than 
William B. Bate when war was flagrant in the 
land; the Union had no truer friend since the war 
clouds were lifted and the waiting sunlight came 
down to bless the land which is the common hope, 
as it is the common heritage, of us all. 

Mr. President, it is true that "peace hath her vic- 
tories no less renowned than war." William B. Bate 
was one of those who came back from the war, sur- 
veyed the scene of red ruin and blank desolation that 



Charles J. Bonaparte 327 

overspread his country, and then with heart reso- 
lute and undismayed faced the awful problems of 
that awful time. All the heroism displayed through 
four blazing years of war paled into insignificance by 
the side of that story of patience, constancy, and for- 
titude which enabled a weaponless and uncaptained 
army of disfranchised citizens to win victory even 
from defeat. 

In private life General Bate was simple, plain, de- 
void of artifice or ostentation. Unusually blessed in 
his domestic relations, he found his happiest hours 
around the family hearthstone and in the company 
of congenial friends; but in all the walks of life the 
same high courage and noble qualities which won 
him honor and fame in field, in forum, and in Senate 
were his. And when he came to meet the inevitable 
hour these qualities rose supreme, and he blenched 
not when he stood face to face with the king of ter- 
rors. Over him the grave could win no victory and 
for him death had no sting. As in the ardor of his 
youthful prime he had faced death without a tremor, 
with all the courage of a soldier, so at the last he met 
death with all the fortitude of a Christian. At peace 
with his fellow-man, with his conscience, and his 
God, "he gave his honors to the world again, his 
blessed part to Heaven, and slept in peace." 

CHIEF JUSTICE MARSHALL 

CHARLES J. BONAPARTE 

Of the Baltimore (Md.) Bar; Attorney-General of the' 
United States 

[The introduction and conclusion of an oration delivered 
on "John Marshall Day," February 4, 1901, before the 
Maryland State Bar Association, at Baltimore, Md.] 

For all time Marshall is our great Chief Justice: 
as such he lives to-day in American jurisprudence ; 



328 Oratory of the South 

his words yet inspire, his mind yet molds our judg- 
ments, our laws, the very thoughts of our people. 
He is so completely the Chief Justice, not only of 
our national history, but of our daily national life, 
that to think of him otherwise than as Chief Justice 
calls for a conscious effort. We half assume that for 
us, at least, his life began one hundred years ago 
when, at the age of forty-six, he was installed as the 
first magistrate of our first court. But the forty-six 
years he had then lived made up a life so busy, so 
useful, and so honorable that had it ended a century 
since he were yet one among those few men of whom 
all Americans may be reasonably proud, to whom all 
Americans may be justly grateful. In youth a faith- 
ful and gallant soldier, in early and mature manhood 
a citizen called again and again to arduous public 
service ; he was also, when chosen for his great office, 
one of the most eminent and the most honored law- 
yers of his time. 

His success at the bar was not the fruit of any 
marked advantages in legal education: so far as is 
known, a single course of lectures at William and 
Mary College, delivered by Mr. Wythe, afterwards 
Chancellor, supplemented by such meager oppor- 
tunities for private study as were afforded by a few 
months' intermission in his military career, sufficed 
to qualify him for a license to practice. Indeed, al- 
though one so well fitted as Horace Binney to speak 
on the subject has said of him, "His learning was 
great and his faculty of applying it of the very first 
order," there can be little doubt that the second part 
of this description is far more accurate than the first, 
and that his truly wonderful skill in making use of 
what he knew led those who heard him to believe, 
often against his own disclaimer, that he knew far 
more than his well filled life had ever left him time 
to learn. Justice Story, his colleague for nearly a 



Charles J. Bonaparte 329 

quarter of a century, thus admirably depicts his char- 
acter and acquirements : 

"That he possessed an uncommon share of jurid- 
ical learning would naturally be presumed from his 
large experience and inexhaustible diligence. Yet it 
is due to truth as well as to his memory to declare 
that his juridical learning was not equal to that of 
many of the great masters in the profession, living 
or dead, at home or abroad. He yielded at once 
to their superiority of knowledge, as well in the 
modern as in the ancient law . . . The original 
bias, as well as the choice, of his mind was to general 
principles and comprehensive views, rather than to 
technical or recondite learning. He loved to ex- 
patiate upon the theory of equity; to gather up the 
expansive doctrines of commercial jurisprudence ; and 
to give a rational cast even to the most subtle dogmas 
of the common law ... It was a matter of sur- 
prise to see how easily he grasped the leading prin- 
ciples of a case, and cleared it of all its accidental 
encumbrances; how readily he evolved the true 
points of the controversy, even when it was manifest 
that he never before had caught even a glimpse of 
the learning upon which it depended. He seized, 
as it were by intuition, the very spirit of juridical 
doctrines, though cased up in the armor of centuries ; 
and he discussed authorities as if the very minds of 
the judges themselves stood disembodied before 
him." 

No one, in fact, can have read intelligently Mar- 
shall's opinions without noting how sparingly he 
refers to authorities in support of his views: in the 
vast majority of instances he speaks of adjudged 
cases only to distinguish them from that before the 
Court. A single decision, at most two or three, al- 
ways, however, strictly apposite, will be occasionally 
cited, but any one of the many modern opinions, 



330 Oratory of the South 

dealing with questions of incalculably less importance 
and less difficulty, contains more citations than the 
a gg re g ate of all he delivered during thirty-five years. 

Marshall's professional career was repeatedly 
sacrificed to the public interest. In these days we 
smile when told that an office has sought the man 
who fills it, smile somewhat sadly, somewhat bitterly ; 
why, we know too well; but in his life we see this 
done, not once, but often, not in semblance, but in 
grave and painful truth. A man of very moderate 
fortune, with many just and heavy calls upon his 
means, he frequently interrupted his lucrative prac- 
tice, sometimes altogether, sometimes in great part, 
to serve his fellow-countrymen in exigencies which, 
to his mind, left no choice, always to strengthen his 
claims to their gratitude, but always to leave him, in 
worldly goods, a poorer man. He refused public 
service whenever his conscience tolerated the refusal : 
he declined to be Attorney General, Minister to 
France, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court; he 
announced more than once his permanent retirement 
from public life and his purpose to devote himself 
thereafter to the practice of his profession. In the 
words of Binney: "Office, power and public honors 
he never sought. They sought him, and never found 
him prepared to welcome them, except as a sense of 
duty commanded." But the same "sense of duty" 
which had once bidden him draw his sword in his 
country's cause forbade him to stand aloof whenever 
he was called too clearly for his modesty to question 
the call, to serve her in peace as he had served her 
in war; and this was too often for his personal in- 
terest and his professional prosperity. Marshall 
was a great lawyer, who had been greater had the 
people's just sense of his merits allowed him to be a 
lawyer only. 

He was Secretary of State when, in the autumn 



Charles J. Bonaparte 331 

of 1800, Chief Justice Ellsworth resigned his office. 
President Adams sought Marshall's advice as to a 
fit successor and, at his suggestion, requested the for- 
mer Chief Justice, John Jay, to resume his seat; when 
Mr. Jay declined, Marshall recommended the choice 
of Mr. Justice Patterson, but the President preferred 
another. In his own words, he had in mind for the 
office "a gentleman in full vigor of middle life, in 
the full habits of business, and whose reading of the 
science of the law is fresh in his mind." On Janu- 
ary 31, 1 80 1, he wrote to the then Secretary of 
War, desiring him "to execute the office of Secretary 
of State so far as to affix the seal of the United States 
to the enclosed commission to the present Secretary 
of State, John Marshall, of Virginia, to be Chief 
Justice of the United States." 

Of all the men in high office who listen to-day to 
his eulogies, how many, I ask you, will have life, will 
have even being, in the thoughts of their country- 
men sixty-six, or even six, years after their earthly 
lives have closed? Which one of those now power- 
ful and prominent in the land can hope, with reason, 
to be more than a swiftly fading memory, more than 
a name men have already half forgotten a single year 
after his epitaph has been graven on his tomb? In 
the vast whirring, crashing bustle of modern in- 
dustrial civilization, flitting shapes of transitory dig- 
nity hurry by us from one abyss of oblivion to an- 
other, and are gone ere we well know that they are. 
Who will think a century's, nay, a generation's space 
hence, of our country's rulers of to-day? How 
many among her rulers in the days of my own child- 
hood, even of my early manhood, can be recalled, 
save by an effort of memory, now? Yet from this 
chaos of forgotten mediocrity a few names, a few 
lives, stand forth, gaining, instead of losing, in dis- 
tinctness and stature as the years roll by, growing 



332 Oratory of the South 

into their true and lasting greatness as time sweeps 
into his rubbish heap all the false and transient 
eminence of petty men beside them. And the figure 
of the great Chief Justice, of the man who made our 
Constitution the living bulwark of our orderly free- 
dom, who taught our courts their full mission and our 
people to trust in our courts ; who, in himself, left us 
a model for all judges and an object of reverence for 
all men, that figure will endure a breathing, speaking 
guide to the thoughts and acts and lives of Americans 
while America is yet great and yet worthy of her 
greatness, while the justice of her courts is yet the jus- 
tice of righteousness. 



THE LAST STAND OF LEE'S VETERANS 

EMORY SPEER 

United States District Court Judge, Southern District of 

Georgia 

[Extract from a lecture on Robert E. Lee, first deliv- 
ered at Yale University, and thereafter on various occa- 
sions.] 

Convinced that in the field the army of Lee is un- 
conquerable, General Grant swiftly transfers his army 
to the south of the James. He intends to surprise 
Petersburg and compel the evacuation of Richmond. 
But Lee's penetration is not at fault. The slumbers 
of the people of the Confederate capital are disturbed 
by the tramp of marching thousands. It is the tire- 
less quickstep of Lee's fighters hastening at top speed 
to find their foe. In all the history of human strife, 
never was march more fateful. The steam flotilla 
and the pontoon bridges of General Grant have given 
his army a start of many hours. He is now south 
of the James. Petersburg, gateway to the Confeder- 



Emory Speer 333 

ate capitol, is almost within his grasp. Lee's army 
is north of the river many miles away. The most 
untutored of all those desperate men knows the dan- 
ger to their cause, as well as Lee himself. No sound 
in those fierce ranks, save the clank of accouterments, 
the tread of rushing thousands, and the stern com- 
mands of their officers. With set and rigid faces, 
parched throats, and untiring muscles, onward, ever 
onward, press those terrible men in gray. Not in 
vain now, the wind and training of years of furious 
fighting, hard marching, and slender rations. Not 
in vain through their great hearts stream the hero 
blood, flowing down from far distant sires who 
rolled back from German forests the fierce legions 
of Varus, from Saxons who had hurled from the 
trenches at Hastings the mailclad warriors of the 
Conqueror, from Crusaders who had "swarmed up 
the breach at Ascalon," from yoemanry who had 
cloven down the chivalry of France at Agincourt and 
Poitiers, from ragged Continentals who had won 
American independence. And when the first blush 
of dawn breaks on Petersburg, the last stronghold of 
the Confederacy, and the charging columns of Grant 
rush to the attack, up rises from the trenches the 
rebel yell, out breaks the riven battle flags, down 
come the rifles with steady aim, and forth blaze the 
withering volleys which tell the Army of the Poto- 
mac that the men of Manassas, Fredericksburg, An- 
tietam, Chancellorsville, the Wilderness, Spottsyl- 
vania, and Cold Harbor have again arrived on time. 
As predicted by General Lee, the siege of Peters- 
burg is but a question of days. Held by a mistaken 
policy immovably in his lines, his unequaled powers 
as a strategist are now of no avail. His enemy finds 
him at will. His bright sword, whose lightning play 
for so long has parried every thrust, and again and 
again has flashed over the guard, and disabled his 



334 Oratory of the South 

foe, now held fast as if on an anvil, may be shattered 
by the hammer of Grant. His is soon a phantom 
army. The lean and hungry faces seem to belong 
to shadows without bodies. The winter falls, their 
uniform is a rude patchwork of rags. On those rare 
occasions when there are cattle to kill, the green 
hides are eagerly seized and fashioned into rough 
buskins to protect bare and bleeding feet from the 
stony and frozen ground. Often their ration is a 
little parched corn, sometimes corn on the cob. 
Jocular to the last, "Les Miserables," they call them- 
selves, appropriating, with pronunciation which 
would have startled the author, the title of Victor 
Hugo's famous novel, which, reprinted in Richmond 
on wrapping paper, affords some of them solace 
through those awful days. 

"Day and night, for months," writes one of Lee's 
biographers, "an incessant fire without one break 
rained down upon them all known means of destruc- 
tion. Their constancy during those dismal days of 
winter never failed. Night came, they lay down in 
their trenches where cold and the enemy's shells left 
them no repose. Snow, hail, wind, rain, cannon fire, 
starvation, they had to bear all without a ray of 
hope." 

Their lines stretch from below Richmond, on the 
north side of the James, to Hatchers Run far to the 
south of Petersburg. In front of them, supplied 
with every comfort and every munition of war, is 
a mighty army. In many places the Federal and 
Confederate lines are not a dozen yards apart. 
Finally, with thirty-three thousand men, Lee is hold- 
ing forty miles of trenches, and every night his men 
unroll their thin blankets and unloose their shoe- 
strings, with deep forbodings of what the morrow 
may bring. Officers and men know that the end is 
at hand, but their desperate courage never falters, 



Emory Speer 335 

and when at last the powerful army of Sheridan is 
detached to assail his right flank, and Lee is com- 
pelled to withdraw the infantry from his line to meet 
this movement, in the absence of defenders Grant 
as if on parade marches over the Confederate lines, 
Richmond falls, and after a brief interval of heroic 
unavailing strife the Army of Northern Virginia is 
annihilated. The fearless remnant of his worn and 
wasted veterans, surrounded at Appomattox by ten 
times their number, without a word of unkindness 
from their brave foemen, whom they had so often de- 
feated, so long held at bay, with all the honors of 
war, surrender their battle-riven standards. 

Then came that ever to be remembered scene, 
when his loving veterans gather at the side of their 
General, press his hands, touch his clothing, and 
caress his horse. In simple manly words he said, 
"Men, we have fought through the war together. 
I have done my best for you. My heart is too full 
to say more." And then came the last order to the 
Army of Northern Virginia, read through tears 
which wash the grime of battle from the veterans' 
faces: not tears of anger or humiliation, but tears 
of sympathy for him, of exultation and pride for the 
martial honor, even to the humblest private, his 
leadership had won; honor preserved to them with 
arms in their hands, by the terms of the surrender, 
the proudest heritage to the latest times of that hero 
strain. Aye, more, a heritage of valor and potency 
now and forever at the command of our reunited 
land, which the powers of earth may well heed in 
all the contingencies threatening to our welfare the 
future may have in store. 

And then came that sad autumnal day so many 
years ago, yet so near to us who wore the gray, as 
standing with wife and loved ones to invoke on his 
frugal table the blessing of the Master he loved and 



336 Oratory of the South 

served, he sank to rise no more. Oh, what then did 
foe and friend say of Lee? Much was said, but all 
was said by one, in the words of the Arthurian 
legend : 

"Ah, Sir Lancelot, there thou liest. Thou wert 
head of all Christian knights, and now, I dare say, 
thou wert the courtliest knight that ever bare shield 
. and thou wert the kindest man that ever 
strake with sword; and thou wert the goodliest per- 
son that ever came among press of knights ; and thou 
wert the meekest man and the gentlest that ever ate 
in hall among ladies; and thou wert the sternest 
knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in rest." 



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